The Big Dream (Warm Bodies: Awakening short)
by Wilkwo
Summary: Alan felt like laughing at himself. What was it about this guy that bugged him so much! Those weirdly intense blue eyes bore into his, and when the guy spoke it was low and full of threat. "You have nothing I want, and nothing I will ever need." A not-quite-short story that explores the end of the world, R's returning memories, and love. M for language/drug use/adult situations.
1. Dealing

_Hello everyone! This is a Warm Bodies 'short' (bwahaha) story that percolated after I put up a poll for the first time asking what kind of one-shots folks would like to see. Of course I don't get a lot of traffic, so I had only one response. That person wanted to see what happened when R was hit by a car - something mentioned in my second WB fic (Little Brown Bear) - and I wanted to see what happened in the lecture R mentions in my first fic (Awakening). So I figured, why not combine them?_

 _This is the story I got back. I never intended it to be so long, but then again, I never do. I had a nice neat packaged story on the idea of need, then ALL of the things happened and took my story somewhere fascinating. :) I got more time with R & Julie than I thought I would, so that was awesome, and while it's a little sad, it's also quite beautiful in the end._

 _You do however, spend about 3/4 of the story with an OC who is, quite simply, an ass. Through him you'll see the beginnings of the zombie apocalypse. Bad Things happen, as you'd expect. I hope you'll bear with it, because R is sprinkled throughout, and the story gives you a little more insight into our favorite character, as I write him._

 _Enjoy, hopefully? And please leave a review, when you have a moment :D Usual disclaimer of course - R & Julie are Isaac Marion's characters, though I write from Jonathan Levine's movie versions more than anything. :) Read the book if you haven't. **Also, read at least my first Warm Bodies story - Warm Bodies: Awakening before reading this.**_

* * *

Alan wasn't a greedy guy. At least, he didn't think so. He did however want his fair share, and if his idea of 'fair' was a little more than the next guy's, that was their problem.

Some folks didn't know how to dream big.

Boy, he did. He had huge plans, that went well beyond the course he'd been half-assedly studying for the bulk of the year. He could see beyond the tests, the grades, the lectures that made him want to scoop his own eyes out. He was in this for his business degree, but he _knew_ business.

He was doing it every day, quiet little transactions in low traffic hallways, toilets, his own dorm room, but only when his roommate was out. He'd been a little wary of that lately, starting to get paranoid that his roommate was in with the cops.

He had a growing customer base, like any good business - one he was carefully cultivating with high-grade product and a lot of reassuring contact. Once he had their confidence, he'd start cutting the product a little, and offering samples of the harder stuff to help them branch out, stop pussy footing with the light shit, get them hooked on a bigger high.

Then they were his.

He had some competition of course, every good business did, but he knew how to undermine them without undercutting and stemming his own profit. He also knew the power of rumor and persuasion, and how to heighten and twist paranoia, till a person's nerves were taunt enough to snap. Then they'd do stupid things, and when he could aim those stupid things, his competition ended up in jail. Or worse.

He knew the local suppliers too, and the silk road wannabes, but steered clear of both. Too easy to track things online, and the locals were shaky and their shit way overpriced. Instead he made it his business to know who supplied the locals, and worked directly with them, giving them exactly what they wanted, and a little more, whenever they asked. He was always ahead of the game when it came to his debts, he knew exactly what was at stake, and what happened to those who weren't careful.

Alan was always careful.

He also grew his own stuff - a little local stash for quick access, with a substantial crop on his Uncle's commune just upstate. They loved him up there, Todd and his third wife Millie, their kids, and his prepper neighbor - the extended family as his Uncle liked to say. Lot of love up on that farm, and they were all smoking it, even the kids. Alan didn't mind, as long as they kept growing it. He kept them even happier with some synthetic stuff he was playing with from his biggest supplier - while the chemistry set crap was beyond him, he was crafting combos with the synthetics that slammed on the high and kept it going for hours longer than the best gold.

Nothing was off limits, but he never sold anything he didn't try a little of himself. Quality control was important - he was always careful what he cut with and how much - it kept the customers happy and coming back for more, and kept accidents to a minimum. He even had a little first timer package for clients moving into new territory - the basic gear they needed, advice for staying safe and getting the most potent return, and goodies to buffer the inevitable fall.

He was there for his customers. He felt their need, their hunger, and gave them exactly what they wanted.

And he was always looking for more. It was an active game for him - no sitting back, waiting for the deadbeats to knock on his door like everybody else. He wanted more. He wanted _better_. He didn't want unpredictable, unreliable losers who couldn't handle their debts. So he stayed in the halls, stayed off the streets, and everyone he met was a potential customer.

It was all about broadening his base, while avoiding the cops. Luck had been on his side with two raids so far, and his instincts kept him covered otherwise. He was almost positive the short squat guy from his floor - _what was his name? Mike? Martin?_ Something beginning with 'M' - was working with the police. Guy always developed a stammer and a sudden sweat anytime he approached Alan, and asked the outright dumbest shit.

Alan hadn't taken the bait, acted oblivious, and had finally started suggesting rehab centers in a loud voice towards the kids chest, to help Murphy - _no, still wasn't right_ \- get over the 'drug problem' he seemed to have, all the while glaring at the kid with eyes that promised some serious hurt.

The kid had stopped bothering him after that, avoiding him awkwardly and obviously, and Alan finally started to relax. Which was good - too much stress over this and he'd start digging heavily into his own shit, and that was something he never let himself do. He was too smart for that.

So he relaxed, he moved through the world like it owed him something, like he had time and the means to collect, and he set his sights on some new prospects.

Tonight, for instance, he was going to hook a kid up with another bag of his special joints, after luring the guy off of straight weed. Laced with just a little blow for now, and the kid was really digging it. Said it helped him play like a freak, and he'd invited Alan to come down to the Cave at the Student Union and see his band. Alan really couldn't give a shit about the music, but musicians were easy clients, so he'd agreed to go along.

Dragging a hand through his dark curly hair as he sized himself up in the mirror, Alan glanced through the reflection at his roommate, sitting on the bed opposite under massive headphones. The ipad in the guy's lap cast shifting patches of color across his blankly focused face. Finally feeling Alan's gaze, Peter glanced up through jagged blonde bangs.

"What?"

Alan shrugged. "Nothing." He nodded at the guy's ipad, "What ya watching?"

Peter glared back for a moment. "A movie."

Alan smirked, and focused on himself again in the mirror. His roommate didn't like him, he knew that. But the guy was quiet and private, and that was priceless.

He flashed his teeth. They looked good. Straight and brilliant white. Respectable. Teeth were important. They could tell you a lot about a person. About their character. Their status. And a bonus - anyone looking to buy the harder shit, like ice, with perfect teeth? That was someone you walked away from quick.

"Your friend dropped by."

Shrugging on a navy sportcoat that matched his eyes, Alan looked back at Peter.

"Who?" he asked.

"The big guy, with the thick face," Peter answered, still staring at the glowing screen against his knees. "Denis?"

Alan grew very still. "What'd he want?"

Peter's eyes flicked to his, and the slightest smirk touched the corner of his mouth. "He said you were supposed to deliver something, but you didn't, and he didn't know why." Those eyes flicked maddeningly back to the screen. "He seemed... _unhappy_."

Turning away from the mirror, Alan stared down at his roommate. Peter just stared at his ipad, with the slightest smile on his face.

 _Little shit._

"What else'd he say?" Alan asked, his voice a little rough. Denis was not someone he wanted to see right now. The guy was built like a goddamn bear and had the shortest fuse of anyone Alan had ever met. It was a mistake ever dealing with him, and now that Alan was trying to back off, the guy was getting pushy. Denis had flashed some hardware at him a few days ago, insisting on a 'special discount' and took everything Alan had on him at the time. Thankfully he'd packed light, so it was only double the amount he'd usually give the guy, but he'd figured that was the end of it. Who else would have the balls to hold him up twice?

"That he'd come back later."

 _Goddammit._

Peter frowned then and looked up at him. "He looked weird though."

"Weird?"

"Yeah, sick. Pale and shaky." The smirk returned. "Wonder why."

Alan's lips grew thin as he glared at the kid on the bed. But he didn't say anything. Denis had grabbed enough coke to keep him happy for a few weeks at least, and it'd been some quality stuff. If Denis had blown through it all already, he wouldn't be sick.

He'd be dead.

"No idea," Alan said finally. Then he started to the door. "I'm going out. If he comes back, tell him I'll find him tomorrow."

Peter leaned back casually against his pillow. "To deliver his stuff?"

Without bothering to answer, Alan stuffed the keys in his pocket and pushed out of the room, turning right towards the stairwell.

Peter was definitely acting funny.

He probably should've moved off-campus by now, but he'd been trying to keep a low profile, to blend in as just another student. Didn't hurt that he was close to his biggest group of customers either. Frowning, he swung the door open to the stairwell and skipped down the stairs. The bigger problem was Denis. The guy wasn't going to call it quits, clearly. Something had to be done.

With a forced breath, Alan pushed out of the dorm into the cool night air and headed down the cracked sidewalk towards the main campus. His thoughts came in staccato bursts, most revolving around what to do with Denis. All of the options were messy.

Reaching the student union, he pushed past two giggling girls as they staggered out of the building into the night, and he turned and watched them laugh and stumble their way towards the center of town. Already high and having a good night.

He smiled, and jogged after them, making a quick sale to the redhead before her friend pushed him away and dragged her down the sidewalk. Throwing a sloppy salute at them both, he heading into the building and was surrounded immediately by a cacophony of sound - flattened guitars through overstrained amps and a voice above it all, clear and strong, weaving around the melody. A couple of guys were making out on the far end of a clutter of tables, and not far from them some heavy set chick was stabbing at a medical textbook with a blunt highlighter. He knew her. What was her name? _Amy? Allison?_ Something beginning with 'A'. Which was funny, because Adderall was the only thing she ever bought.

He followed the noise down the stairs to the left, and shifted through a sudden mass of bodies, bouncing and swinging to the music. The lights turned warm and trippy - pinks, blues and greens bathing sweaty smiling faces and hands weaving through the air like snakes. Beyond them rose the stage, shallow and small, and standing before everyone, a tall, lanky kid, his dark hair hanging in wet strands over his eyes as he roared into the mic, then pulled back, his foot stabbing down in time with the music as he thrashed against the strings of his guitar.

Alan stayed at the periphery, leaning against the wall, and just watched for a while. The drummer he'd come to see was smashing at the kit against the back of the stage, his whole body slamming away behind the sticks, and Alan could tell he'd taken a few hits for the show - his eyes were wide, his grin ecstatic.

But Alan's gaze kept sliding from him, past the bassist and second guitarist, to the lead singer again, who'd returned to the mic, cradling it as he wrapped up the song with a long clear note that dominated the room and sent the crowd into a frenzy.

 _Wow._

The guy really had something. Great voice, but more than that - he looked like he belonged up there, in front of everyone.

He was definitely going places.

With the right kind of support.

Alan shifted then, heading towards the stage as the band wrapped up, the lead singer thanking everyone through a rush of applause and whistles before shilling their next gig.

What was the name of the band? Alan didn't think he'd heard it right, something about a League? All-Star something?

 _Dumb name._

The drummer noticed him then - Eric was the guy's name, same as his dead brother, the only reason Alan remembered it - and waved him up to the stage as the bassist started unhooking the amps and two flushed faced girls accosted the singer.

Alan kept an eye on the guy as Eric met him with a slap on the shoulder, raving about their set, how invincible he'd felt, how _on_ he'd been, and that he could have gone all night. Alan nodded and watched as the singer shrugged his way through the girls' giggled questions. When the brunette nestled her arm around his waist, the kid actually looked embarrassed and shifted away, quickly pulling the mic stand over to block her as he broke it down.

Alan chuckled at the sight, then refocused on Eric as he realized the guy had just asked him something.

"Huh?" he asked.

"Did you bring some for me?" Eric asked, his eyes eager and bloodshot. Sweat was beading on his forehead, and Alan could see his flushed scalp through his spiked black hair.

Alan smiled. "Sure. All wrapped and ready to go."

Eric's expression grew joyous, and he quickly dived into his jean pocket for his wallet, fingering through the bills to pull out a couple of crinkled fifties. Alan took the moment to scan the room, and shifted slightly to obscure the transaction as he plucked the bag from his jacket and swapped it for the cash in Eric's hand.

"Hey," came a voice over his shoulder.

Alan turned, smoothly tucking the cash into his jean pocket as he faced the singer, and found himself looking at the kid's chin. Guy was tall. Out of the corner of his eye he caught Eric fumbling to stuff the bag away.

The man's blue eyes rose from Eric's fumbling to meet Alan's gaze, and the guy frowned, his stare turning glacial.

Something passed through Alan then, something he'd struggle to put a finger on for the rest of the night. A weird jolt down his spine that hit him just as the man's eyes locked with his own. Cold and uncomfortable.

Odd.

The guy had looks to go with the talent though, and that made him even more interesting. Could do with a better wardrobe. The red hoodie and sneakers were a bit grungy for what he was selling with his voice.

Before the singer could say anything, Alan stuck out a hand.

"Hi," he said simply.

The man didn't take the bait. Glaring back at Eric, the singer ducked down to snatch up a mic cable and started to spool it.

Eric slapped Alan irritatingly on the back again, and grasped the singer by the shoulder. "This a friend of mine, man," he said to the kid, the words bending funny as he spoke, "He's cool!"

And the drummer introduced them then, mumbling the singer's name, as he traded it for Alan's. The name slid out of Alan's mind just as quickly as it came in, as most names did.

But it was something starting with 'R'.

Alan dropped his hand, and gave the guy a sincere smile. "You got a hell of a voice."

Muttering a terse thanks, the kid flung the spooled cable down hard into a duffle the bassist had opened on the stage. Glancing back at the drummer, obviously irritated, the guy shook his head as he snatched up another cable.

"It was on fire tonight, yeah?!" Eric raved at the singer, grabbing another cable and flinging it around like a lasso. "Shit was _on_ , right?!"

"Jesus, Eric," the guy breathed, tossing in the coil, before pulling his guitar back from the snaking cable. "Pack your stuff up already."

"Man, we should go play somewhere else," Eric said with flushed excitement, as he headed over to his drums, "Right now! Where could we get a gig?! Let's just play in the middle of the Circle, that'd be sick!" He stopped midway through tearing down his kit, and picked up his sticks to hammer out a quick, frantic rhythm that ended with a thunderous smash against the cymbals.

"Eric!" the singer yelled, snapping the clasps down on his guitar case. "For fuck's sake, wrap it up! The next group's coming on!"

"Shit," the drummer called back, nodding as he jumped up off his seat and started to pack up for real. "Right."

Alan smirked at the exchange, and gazed down at the singer. This kid needed to relax, have some fun. Clearly the guy had an idea of what had passed between Alan and Eric a moment ago, and wasn't too happy about it. Alan had to find some way to turn that around.

He walked over, casual and confident, and flashed his best smile.

"You got a lot of talent, you know that?"

The guy shot him a dark look and got to his feet, pulling the case with him.

"Yeah, I do."

Alan blinked, surprised by the guy's response. He'd totally expected a flustered deflection of the compliment, particularly after seeing the kid so awkward around those girls. Guy didn't exactly exude ego.

He pushed on.

"Yeah," he agreed, nodding with the same smile. "You could be big."

Eric was jabbering at the bassist now, a stocky guy with a thick beard and not much on top, and the singer's intense blue eyes darted to the drummer and back, darkening.

"What'd you sell him?" he asked in a low voice.

"Something he wanted," Alan replied, and he scrambled for words that might mean something to the guy. "An edge."

The singer drew nearer, and Alan searched for his name again as the man loomed over him by half a foot. _Roger? Roman?_ Why the hell was it so hard for him to remember names?

"That's not the kind of edge he needs," the man muttered, blue eyes cold. Alan got that weird feeling again, something that unsettled him enough to make him step back. Retreating wasn't his style though, and it confused him - even though he wasn't the tallest man, he had no problems standing his ground against bigger, bulkier guys who made a job out of intimidation. Confidence had never been something he'd lacked.

But there was something _about_ this guy.

"That's his decision, don't you think?" Alan offered casually, resisting the urge to throw something cheap about parenthood into the fray. This guy interested him. The kid's future interested him. It was going to be big. Important. Alan wanted to be a part of that.

He just had to find something the guy wanted.

Something he could turn into a _need_.

And then the kid would be his.

The singer scowled at him and twisted away, yanking the duffle and guitar case along as he went to talk to the other guitarist, a bookish kid with a blonde crew cut and glasses.

Alan turned back to Eric, and offered a hand with a drum case as the guy fumbled, swearing and sweating, with the stack of gear.

"Easy man," Alan said quietly, "Let me help." Wasn't doing his image any good, this kid struggling so much. As he guided Eric off the stage he leaned in close. "How many you smoke before the gig?"

Eric licked his upper lip and shrugged. His eyes were dilated. "Two.. no, three. I think? That was some sweet shit."

Alan scowled at the drummer, and glanced back at the guy in red following behind as they moved out of the Cave and up the stairs. He leaned in close again. "I told you to stick to one the first few times, remember?"

Eric gave him a fevered grin. "Nobody can eat just one man." Then he burst out laughing, high pitched and skittery, amused by his own stupid joke. Alan kept him moving, and as they reached the exit, the drummer twisted back, pointing to the far corner. "Look at those guys sucking face!"

The shout made everybody turn, and Alan was suddenly shoved aside, his view filling with red. Eric vanished then as the singer grabbed him and pulled him bodily through the doors out into the night.

With a smirk, Alan followed, catching the trail end of an argument between the two.

"..idiot, we need a drummer!"

"I'm not an idiot asshole," Eric shouted back, swatting at the guy's hand on his arm, "m'the best fuckin' drummer you'll ever have!"

The singer let him go, then stabbed a finger back at the building. "Not like this you're not - you raced through half the set!"

Eric gave a quick laugh and looked at the other guy like he was a moron. "I made it better! Was too fuckin' slow!"

"Jesus, Eric," the tall man sighed. "Go home. Don't use that shit before our gigs again, okay?"

The bassist stepped forward then, snatching the drum case out of Alan's hands before joining them both. "C'mon man." He put his arm around Eric's shoulder and started walking down the path with the guy, throwing a quick wave back at the singer in red. "Great gig Ro, see ya tomorrow."

"Yeah Steve," the kid nodded, and glanced back towards Alan and the building entrance, "Percy go already?"

"Yep," Steve called back.

"Cool."

When the guy grabbed his case again and headed down the path around the side of the building, Alan jogged to catch up with him. Salvaging this situation wasn't going to be easy, and a part of him wondered why he was trying so hard. There were plenty of other fish here.

But there was _something_ about this guy.

"Hey," he said, drawing up alongside him. "Ro, right?"

The guy scowled at him. "Go away."

"Hear me out, would ya?" Alan said with a light little laugh, keeping stride with the singer even as the man started to walk faster. "Eric shouldn't have done so much, that was a mistake."

The guy said nothing, just kept his head down as he walked, and Alan smiled, feeling like he could make a connection here, that he could get through to the kid.

"You're going to be big Ro, I can tell," he said quickly. "Everyone's going to know your name one day, you know that?"

The man stopped suddenly, and Alan had to pull up so sharply he almost tripped over his own feet. Seems he really had the guy's attention.

"Everybody's going to know my name, huh?" the singer said, lowering his guitar case to the ground.

"Yeah," Alan said, smiling. "You're going to be huge, but you'll need-"

"What's my name, Alan?" The man asked, tilting his head slightly. His face was stiff, his lips tight with anger.

Alan realized then that he'd completely misjudged this. And what the hell _was_ the guy's name? It started with R... his friend called him Ro... Roger? Rodney? _Shit!_

Avoiding the question, he pushed on, "Listen, you want to get to the top, and you want to stay there, you need something special, something to keep you _on_."

The guy's mouth twisted in a cold smirk. "Yeah?"

"Yeah. You're naive if you think you can get there without it."

The guy said nothing, just stared at him with the smirk frozen on his face.

Dropping the smile, Alan grew serious. "Look, I've got the highest quality, safest stuff here, and my prices are real good. The cheaper shit's cut with crap that'll wreck you. And I know what'll drive you without burning you out." The smile returned. It was a decent spiel. "I've got what you'll need to give you that edge.. get you where you wanna go."

The singer's eyes grew sharp, darkening in a deep frown, and the man stepped into his space, towering over him again. Alan swallowed and leaned back, and felt like laughing at himself. What the hell was wrong with him? What was it about this guy that bugged him so much?!

Those weirdly intense blue eyes bore into his, and when the guy spoke it was low and full of threat.

"You have _nothing_ I want," he said slowly, evenly, his face set hard. "And nothing I will _ever_ need."

Alan smirked.

"I've heard that before," he said quietly. "And it doesn't mean shit. You'll see what I mean. Your world's going to change so fast, you'll need something to keep up with it. You'll come back to me, hungry for what I've got."

"Jesus Christ," the guy muttered, shaking his head as he turned away and snatched up his guitar case. With a few long strides, he headed down the path, turning back only once. "You keep away from me and my friends, sell your shit elsewhere."

"And what if I don't?" Alan called after him, his mouth twisting in a odd, irritated smirk.

"I'll call the cops," the kid muttered back at him, and disappeared around the corner.

Alan stood for a moment, just staring at the space the kid had occupied. He took in a deep breath, and let it out slow, then took a quick look around, to make sure nobody was lingering, watching the exchange between them.

The kid's threat didn't mean much to him. The cops knew who he was, they just didn't have the evidence to bust him yet. He was careful not to keep anything in the dorms, and had a bunch of places where he stashed his stuff in between deliveries.

But it was irritating. He'd wanted to get on the kid's good side. Get in on what the guy was about to do. Something big was in the guy's future, and Alan wanted to be a part of it. He'd meant what he'd said - guy was naive if he thought he could just step into that lifestyle and not partake. It was going to happen. Alan wanted to be there when he did.

His mouth twisted in a smirk as his mind played with the idea, exaggerating it until the kid was practically clawing at him, eyes wild with need.

 _I own you_. He'd say, and the guy would just nod, hands shaking, fumbling for Franklins.

The fantasy dissolved as he remembered how he'd felt when he'd looked up at the guy. That cold, blue stare. He frowned. He still didn't get why that'd thrown him so much.

Shrugging the feeling off, he crammed his hands into his pockets and started towards the center of town. He'd try a different approach, see if he couldn't reel him in with a sample. Guy wouldn't take it of course, so Alan would just have to find a way to give it. Something strong and fast, a clean buzz that'd leave him wanting more.

That'd work.

Decision made, he smiled and enjoyed the cool night air, until another thought intruded.

Denis. He'd forgotten all about the guy.

He pulled out his phone and tapped out a quick text to his roommate.

 _Denis come by again?_

Took a long while for Peter to answer, and Alan had almost given up on him as he reached main street and blended in with the packs of students spilling over the sidewalks and weaving with the cars on the road.

When Peter finally replied, it was brief.

 _No_

Alan stared at it for a moment. That was weird. Denis followed up on things, unfailingly. He was like a fucking badger - he got his head stuck on an idea, got his teeth into something, he didn't let go.

Looking up through the mass of grinning, glazed eyed humanity, Alan stared down the street snaking off down the hill, lit sparsely and hugged by cramped two-story student housing. The buildings were old, covered in dull paint now cracked and mildew stained, the windows choked by flapping towels and sheets, fronted by porches littered with the detritus of cheap alcohol binges.

Denis lived in the building four doors down on the right, the apartment upstairs, and his lights were shining over the porch roof.

Without really thinking about it, Alan stepped off the curb in front of a cream colored SUV. The vehicle was crawling anyway because of all of the students on the street, but the lady inside still slammed her hand on the horn, and Alan graced her with a finger before crossing to the other side.

The heavy beat of electronica pulsed from a nearby doorway, sprinkled with laughter and an undercurrent of muffled conversation, and he glanced through the house, recognizing the guy who lived there, smoking on a lumpy red couch with a group of stoners.

He knew every one of them.

Moving on, he passed a couple of dark houses, one with its door wide open, which was creepy, once he stopped and had a good look. His eye was drawn into it, despite his attempt to move on, and he blinked a few times trying to make sure he was seeing things right. The silhouette of some guy stood in the living room, listing a little, his head tilted, as if he was staring at something on the floor.

Frowning, Alan watched him a minute more, and the man dropped to the ground, and out of view.

He stopped and stared. Had he really seen that? Couldn't see anything there now... might have just been his brain playing tricks.

Wasn't about to go see either. He didn't like dark spaces. Not since he was a kid, and monsters stared back from every dark corner of his room out of the corner of his eye. Cramped spaces did him in too, but old dark houses gave him the fucking heebie jeebies.

With a dismissive shrug he couldn't sell, he walked on, and kept his eye on Denis' place, scanning the upstairs window of the guy's room. Alan couldn't see anybody up there, but it looked like the roommate was downstairs watching TV. Crossing the road quickly, he glanced back into the house to see if Denis had come downstairs, or emerged from the kitchen, but the big guy was nowhere to be seen.

Alan stepped up on the porch, and winced at the groan of the old timbers barely performing their job as stairs, before moving to the door, glancing once more at the living room and the guy watching TV.

The sound of sirens came from the back of the set, and the animated voice of a male reporter followed, "..scattered reports of attacks in Boston and New York. According to police reports, those responsible appear to be under the influence of some kind of narcotic. WCH News' own Madison Leary is on the scene at the Tunnel nightclub in Boston, where an unidentified individual attacked and killed three people earlier this evening."

Alan frowned, his hand frozen over the door.

"Madison, you've talked to some eyewitnesses who were in the club at the time?"

"That's right David, I spoke to Marshall Simpson and Latoya Freely, who were both on the scene and saw the attack, and related something very disturbing to me. Apparently the assailant, a well-known homeless woman in her fifties, was shot multiple times during the attack, but the shots had no noticeable effect. It was only when one of the shots hit her in the head that she stopped."

"Madison, that's incredible. This must be what the police were talking about? The drug that they're supposed to be under? They don't feel pain?"

"I'm not sure David. I was also told, and this is pretty shocking, that the woman appeared to be _eating_ one of the people she attacked."

There was a lengthy pause.

"Madison... did we hear you right? You said that the woman appeared to be eating one of the victims?"

"That's correct David."

Another female voice jumped into the conversation, "Wait wait wait... let me get this straight. The woman attacked and ate someone, was shot multiple times without effect?"

"Yes Darla, that's what they're saying."

"And only a headshot brought her down?" Laughter tinkled from the back of the TV, followed quickly by an apology. "I'm sorry folks, but, I'm sorry. David, you're thinking what I'm thinking right?"

"I'm not saying it on live TV, not until we know more. Madison, can you tell us... Madison?"

There was a gasp, a sharp crack of an expletive, and Madison's voice came again, rushed and breathy. "Oh my god! Oh my god!"

"Madison, what's happening now? We can see the feed, are you running?"

"Yes! Oh my god! The ambulance, Dan, get the ambulance in the shot!"

Alan didn't even bother knocking, he opened the door and stepped into the living room, coming around to stare at the TV. The thin, dark haired guy on the couch looked up at him for only a moment before his gaze returned to the screen. Police sirens grew louder, and the camera showed what looked like an accident - the ambulance, slammed up against a telephone pole, the engine smoking. There was a muffled scream from inside the rear of the vehicle, and the camera slid sloppily from the reporter's shocked face back to the ambulance.

"What the? Did you hear that, David?"

"Yes, Madison! What's happening?! Viewers who may have just joined us, we're live with our own Madison Leary, just outside the Tunnel, a nightclub in Boston where a woman attacked, killed and apparently tried to _eat_ multiple victims early this evening. Madison?"

"David, the ambulance was just leaving with the bodies of two of the victims when it veered suddenly onto the sidewalk and crashed!" The reporter moved forward then, as the scene was lit with bright flashes of blue and red, and another strangled cry came from the cabin. "Dan, we have to do something, help me!"

The view dipped briefly, falling to spotlit pavement, which slid by as the cameraman moved forward.

"Madison, I think you should wait for the police honey," came the other woman's voice.

"We have to help them!" Madison cried, and the camera raised again, focusing on her as she reached out and pulled the door open.

There was a ragged, guttural roar, and something, _someone_ , pale and bloodied, launched from the back of the ambulance at the reporter. Madison screamed once, then disappeared as the camera swung wildly, jittering back and forth across the scene as the cameraman darted forward with a yell.

"STOP! DOWN ON THE GROUND RIGHT NOW!" a deep voice boomed off camera, just as a grey arm slashed out across the view, setting the world through the lens spinning, and the cameraman gave a wild shriek.

"Madison?! Dan?!"

The ground flew into view, and the video transmission cut off to static, but screaming filled the room, punctuated by wet groans.

"SHOOT IT! SHOOT THEM! FUCK!"

"Cut that feed, cut it!" came a woman's strangled voice, just as gunshots rang through the speakers, and the scene cut to a man in the studio, David presumably. The bronze skinned man with perfect hair stared out from the TV with his mouth hanging open and his eyes wide in shock.

"Uh.."

Abruptly, the channel switched to an ad for dog food, with some fluffy canine jumping over a fence in slow motion, its mouth wide and bouncing in a sloppy grin, exposing sharp white teeth.

Alan blinked.

He didn't move for a long moment, as his brain tried to work out what he'd just seen.

"That has to be a joke," he said finally, muttering more to himself than the other guy in the room.

The kid nodded from the couch out of the corner of his eye, and Alan looked down at the guy.

"Right?" he said, looking for any kind of reassurance he could get, "Some stupid Halloween promo?"

As the kid looked up at him slowly, Alan realized how strung out he was. Bloodshot, glazed eyes peered up at him, heavily lidded, the pupils tight little dots. A latex tourniquet lay discarded at his side, with an empty syringe.

Sean, that was the guy's name, wasn't it? Why the hell did that one stick?

"Yeah," Sean breathed, and nodded again. "Yeah."

Alan's gaze took in the rest of the clutter - a burnt spoon and lighter lay on the nearby card table, next to a can of Red Bull, and behind it, a small plastic wrapped bag of powder, the color of burnt clay.

With a scowl, Alan snatched up the bag and squeezed the contents, shifting them around as he held it next to the light.

"Hey," Sean sighed, reaching out for the bag. "That's mine.."

"Sean, this is shit," Alan snapped back at him, dumping it down on the card table. "Did Bobby sell you this?!"

With a small, limp shrug, Sean reached for the bag, closing his hand around it completely before pulling it to his lap.

"It's junk, Sean, cheap because it's shit. Ten percent pure, at best - you hear me?"

Sean gave another half-shrug, and leaned forward over the card table. His thin fingers closed languidly over the spoon.

Alan snatched up the lighter. "Nod so I know you hear me."

"Hey," the kid said, reaching for it. "That's-"

"You don't buy from Bobby, or Billy, or whatever his name is, you buy from me. Nod so I know you hear me."

Sean scowled. "Give me my lighter Al-OW!"

Alan grabbed the kid's hand and flicked the lighter into life under his palm. Not too close, but just enough to feel it.

" _Nod_ , Sean. You buy from me, right?"

Squirming on the couch, Sean nodded fervently and yanked his hand to his chest as Alan released him.

"Ow... wasn't cool..."

Alan reached into his jacket and pulled out a tiny, tightly wrapped bundle of white powder. He held it out in front of Sean's face, and the guy stopped whining and reached for it.

Alan pulled it back. "Something for your hand. Think it'll help?"

Sean nodded again, much more alert, and even managed a lopsided smile. "Yeah.."

"Buy from me next time, yeah?" At the kid's nod, he dropped the bag into Sean's hand and glanced upstairs. "Denis sleeping it off?"

The guy shook his head as he fumbled to open the bag on the table. "He's out."

"Where'd he go?"

Sean looked up at him with a frown. "Frat party, down the street. Went to steal their booze." The frown deepened. "He looked bad. Real shaky. Pale as shit."

Alan sighed. "He take something?"

The guy shrugged, and reached for his lighter. "He did a couple of lines. Said they didn't help. Left."

Alan handed the lighter over, and glanced up the stairs again. "Going up to look."

Sean shook his head. "Don't man, that's not your space. Gotta respect other people's space."

With a smirk, Alan hovered over the card table for a moment, then handed Sean the spoon, loaded and ready to go. The guy's focus zeroed in on it immediately, and Alan sat next to him, plucking the syringe off the couch and placing it on the table. "Here."

He grabbed the tourniquet and helpfully tied it around the guy's upper arm, then watched as Sean flicked the lighter to life under the spoon, liquefying the heroin. "China white, Sean, enjoy."

It wasn't, but it was better shit than the tar Buddy sold.

Sean drew it up eagerly, and quickly injected it as Alan flicked off the band around the kids arm. The kid's features eased into blankness and he nestled back into the couch.

"There ya go," Alan said, nodding as Sean's eyelids grew thick and heavy. Smirking, he slowly rose from the couch and headed to the stairwell.

The search of Denis' room revealed two things - one of his stolen bags of coke that he happily reclaimed, and that the guy lived in complete filth. There were discarded food wrappers everywhere, ramen bowls with dessicated noodles still inside, a pile of crushed beer cans scattered with quart-sized vodka bottles, hand sanitizer and mouthwash. The carpet was decorated in a fascinating pattern of cigarette burns and vomit. As he headed back out of the room in disgust, he found a spray of puke across the wall next to the door, dripping down to a puddle of the same.

But it was weird. Almost black, like the guy'd been drinking ink.

 _Idiot's taking some fucked up shit._

When he got back downstairs, Sean had folded in on himself, and Alan had to check on him real quick to make sure he hadn't overdone it. His breathing was slow, but deep and steady. He'd be fine.

The TV broadcast had returned to the studio, and the talking heads had replaced their shaken astonishment with well-practiced, polished concern. They were recapping the story so far, with replays of the footage from the ambulance, freezing one of the frames at the moment someone jumped out of the back of the ambulance at the reporter.

Alan stared at that frame, and felt an echo of the weird chill he'd felt around that singer.

It was blurred, and half the face was cropped, but it showed someone ghastly white, their mouth and neck smeared in deep, dark red.

A moment ticked by, then Alan let out a laugh.

"Yeah, right."

And he was out the door, and pondering his next move as he walked down the street, towards the old mansion district where most of the frat houses stood. A streetlight blinked off as he passed under it, and at the exact same moment he heard a strange cry from a lane stretching off to his right.

It cut off suddenly, and Alan stopped and stared into that dark stretch, framed by high hedgerows and grey, graffitied wooden fences.

Had he really just heard that?

A gasp, and a soft moan made him realize that he had. But he didn't move. He didn't understand what was happening, and he never acted without knowing what the fuck was going on.

Something crawled into the deep shadows of a driveway about half way down the lane. Something that wasn't a cat. Or a dog. Or a big ass raccoon.

Something that crawled like a _human_.

"What the _fuck_..." he whispered.

Something that started _tugging_ at a dark shape on the ground.

With its.. face?

The dark shape was jerking, kicking. Gurgling?

 _Christ!_

Alan started running, and his brain checked in half way across the street to alert him to the fact that he was running _towards_ whatever was down that alley, and not _away_ , which he'd intended to do.

But he kept running, and for some fucking reason, he opened his mouth.

"Hey!"

The sound actually scared him, because it was loud, so loud, that the crawling, tugging _eating_ thing couldn't help but hear. He felt afraid and exposed and raw, like a kid who'd just scraped his knee and realized the world was sharp and hard and could hurt you.

And he stopped.

And forgot how to breathe at the sight that spread out before him.

A man was torn open on the driveway, eyes blank, creased in shock and pain. The man's throat was gone, just a torn mass of red on the asphalt.

And another man's face was buried in the dead man's stomach, head shifting and jerking as he pressed in deeper.

 _Eating._

"Oh..g-god.." Alan managed, in a strangled, awful voice, and he backed away from them both, not stopping until the rough wooden slats of an old, broken fence pressed against his back. A boundary to his fear.

And the crawling, eating thing pulled up from the man's stomach...

...and turned.

Sucking in a loud breath, Alan pressed up hard against the fence, his eyes bulging in horror, his mouth frozen open.

 _That's... that's..._

The face twisting towards him, coated in blood and gore, mouth open and dripping, belonged to Denis.

A sound emerged from the bloodied face, a wet gurgle, almost questioning in tone, and he cried out as the thing wearing Denis' face started to crawl towards him across the narrow lane.

"N-no NO NO!" the words shot from him, wild and frantic, and he slid along the fence, his body in full, desperate flight. But his feet tangled in bags of trash dumped carelessly against the wooden slats, bringing him down.

Thrashing against the lumpy plastic, he struggled to get up, but kept slipping, his fingers sliding through the thin film of the bags into the garbage beneath. A deep moan sounded behind him, and as he cried out, wrestling anew in stinking trash, he felt iron fingers clamp over his ankle.

"NO!" he roared, and spun, his body's instincts switching instantly from flight to fight.

Groping desperately, his hand found the edge of a broken slat of the fence, listing towards the ground, and he kicked, struggling to free his foot. Tugging frantically, he freed the old wood and swung it awkwardly, as hard as he could towards the dark shape at his feet.

There was a crunch, but it wasn't the head of the thing breaking, it was the wood slat, snapping with rot against the thing's shoulder.

"FUCK!" he roared, and kicked out again, catching Denis hard in the face. The guy's head snapped back with an awful crack, and the hand jerked away from his ankle. Scrambling madly, Alan skittered from the pile of garbage and got to his feet, and watched in horror as Denis matched the movement.

Jerkily, slowly, the man rose, his head hanging oddly now from a broken neck.

With a mangled cry, Alan grabbed the closest thing he could use as a weapon, a bent piece of rebar poking out from under the pile of trash. It was unwieldy, and spun in his hands as he brought it around, but as he made contact with Denis' bloodied head, the guy's skull caved in with a satisfying crunch and he fell to the ground.

Alan slammed the rebar down on the man's head, again and again, his eyes manic, his breath coming in heavy gasps on the leading edge of madness, until finally the sound of a car passing at the mouth of the lane made him stop and pull back into the shadows.

With every nerve singing in fear, Alan stared down at Denis' body. The man's head was a pulped spray of black across the asphalt, his red fingers curled tightly to either side. Shaking, Alan stared at the dripping piece of metal in his hand.

Someone gasped.

For one moment, Alan thought it was Denis, and his mind started to rabbit as he swung the rebar up again.

But it wasn't Denis, and a quick motion out of the corner of his eye made him turn. In the shadows of the driveway a few feet away, the legs belonging to the man Denis had been feasting on jerked against the blacktop.

"No!" Alan shouted. "NO!"

Without thought, he burst from the hedgerow and crossed to the body that was just now starting to rise, and slammed the rebar across the guy's face...

...stripping it from the skull.

The man's faceless head twisted, the meat underneath dripping black, and the fractured jaw opened.

And it gurgled, and tried to rise to its feet as its intestines spilled over its lap.

Something snatched at Alan's mind, something that chewed up his thoughts and replaced them with static, and the world went away to a soundtrack of screaming.

* * *

 _Hey! Congrats! You made it through the chapter :D Here's hoping you keep going. ;)_


	2. Running

When the world came back to Alan, it came slowly, and it took a while for him to realize that he was staring at the ground, his arms across his knees, his forehead resting against his arms. Sitting up against something rough and cold.

His whole body was cold, and his clothes felt damp, and everything was so strange, he finally looked up as the sound of people talking and laughing reached him.

The sight was jarring. It was daylight. Early morning by the look of it, and the footpath in front of him was dotted with students moving back and forth carrying books, bags, water bottles, soda cans, flicking through their phones, chatting with friends.

Normal campus life.

Alan frowned. _What the fuck?_

He focused closer, taking in his immediate space, and realized he was sitting up against the side of a building, nestled between thorny bushes, his back scraping the old brick.

An open bag of coke at his side.

"Jesus," he mumbled, and quickly reached for it to tuck it away, but stopped short as he saw his hands.

Spattered with black, with a dust of white over the back of his left hand, leading up to his knuckle.

And his nose was running.

Alan started shaking, and his eyes darted back to the passing kids, his mind stuttering over the absolute normalacy of the view before him. Then he looked closer, and saw people frowning at their phones, showing them to each other, making panicked calls.

There were two bodies in the grassy field between the buildings.

Alan's eyes grew wide as he spotted them, and his breathing came in hoarse gasps as he pressed up against the brick wall.

 _Oh shit fuck it's real it's-_

One of the bodies moved - and it was just a guy and his girl, the guy rolling over with a laugh, as he drew the girl in to kiss her. Her thin arms looped lazily over his neck and they pressed together, their bodies meshing so closely they almost seemed to merge.

Letting his head fall back against the brick, Alan squeezed his eyes tightly closed, and tried to get his breathing under control as his mind negotiated with a reality that seemed very far away now.

Was it real?

Did it really happen?

He lifted his hands again, and looked down at himself. His clothes looked like he'd been splashing around in ink.

 _Just like the vomit in Denis' room...  
_ _Just like the mess I left of his... head... and..._

He shuddered, his mind flashing on a face, that wasn't really a face because the facade had been ripped away, disintegrating to pieces while a shrill scream gave the scene music.

"Holy fuck," he mumbled, and grabbing the bag at his side, he stood up sharply, launching himself from the bushes. There was a shriek from a gaggle of girls passing nearby that devolved into giggles and laughter, and Alan scowled at them and tried to get his bearings, hissing as his calf seized up in a cramp.

A sign nearby gave him what he needed. Apparently he'd spent the night against the Olsen Science Building, and he had no fucking clue how he got here. He'd blanked when...

Alan's body started moving faster, towards the dorms, and he quickly tucked the bag, that he'd apparently sampled from, into the lining of his jacket. Running his hand under his nose, he swore out loud as it came away with a dusting of white, startling a thin kid with glasses who was passing him at the time.

He didn't remember snorting his own shit, didn't remember when he decided that sleeping under the stars was how he wanted to spend the night. He didn't remember _anything_...

But that face.

Alan shook his head quickly. _Wasn't real, couldn't be real. I did some blow, screwed my head up..._

Maybe it was contaminated? Maybe that's what made Denis spew black? Maybe that's why Denis went... nuts...

His head went back to that moment. The thing with the broken neck staggering towards him, bloodied hands reaching desperately, curled like claws.

The thoughts spurred his body forward again, and he started running this time, eyes wide, his heart hammering as he passed the last lecture hall adjacent to his dorm.

As he turned the corner he stopped dead, and quickly ducked behind the wall. Students made faces at him as they entered through the double doors nearby, but he ignored them, peering back around the corner towards his dorm.

A police car was idling beside the entrance, the flashing blue and red lights sharply reflected from the glass doors. A balding, broad shouldered cop was standing just outside the entrance, his hand hovering near his sidearm.

 _Oh shit._

Alan froze, his mind locking up in a panic. What were the cops doing here? This was his dorm... were they here for him?

He scowled at himself. Why the hell would they be here for him?

Didn't matter, he couldn't just walk in there now, not looking like this. They'd stop him, they'd probably search him...

His mouth went dry.

 _And they'd find the fucking bag of coke in my jacket._

Trying to calm down, he went to pull out his phone - he'd call Mitch down the hall. The guy looked out for him, would let him know what was going on, maybe run interference.

His groping fingers found nothing.

Frowning, he checked his other pocket.

"Oh shit," he whispered, and crammed his hand into his jeans, and back to his jacket, patting his pockets frantically. "Oh FUCK!"

Running his hand through his hair, he stared at the back of the cop standing by the door.

He'd lost his goddamn phone, and some small voice inside was telling him where.

 _The trash._ It must have fallen out of his pocket when he'd been trying to get out of that goddamn pile of garbage!

Jesus Christ, they _were_ here for him. They'd found his phone at the scene of that insanity, and they were going to try and get him for murder!

 _Fucked, I am FUCKED_

The cop turned from the door, fingers around the radio at his collar, and as Alan stood there staring, his heart pounding furiously, the cop looked up.

And frowned directly at him.

Alan ducked back behind the wall, the pounding of his heart trembling into thunder, and moved without thinking, merging with a group of students flowing into the hall. He glanced back over his shoulder, certain the cop would be storming in right after him, but there were only the last few stragglers running up as some cute chick held the door for them with a smile.

He followed the flow, entering a large room lined with curved rows of seats, lit by warm fluorescent lights high above. The lecturer sat against the wide desk in front, arms crossed, waiting for the last arrivals. Alan kept his head ducked and stayed with the group, heading up the stairs and cutting across to the thickest group of bodies he could find. The noise was irritating, and he felt vulnerable, enclosed... trapped, but he kept his head down and sank into a chair next to a guy who had his laptop up, behind the tallest kid he could find.

What the hell was this class anyway? He shifted forward to try and see the board clearer, and accidentally bumped the guy in front.

"Sorry," he muttered, and slouched back again. Couldn't really work out what it was, some kind of formula he didn't understand. His eyes drifted to the entrance at the base of the stairs. No cop.

 _Phew._

The kid in front turned his head, brow furrowed in irritation, and Alan suddenly realized who it was.

The singer.

"Aw shit," he sighed, and sank further down.

"Are you fucking kidding me?" the guy snapped, his blue eyes livid. "Seriously?!"

Alan held up a hand, "Man, I didn't know it was you, I'm just..."

The guy twisted around further, "You didn't think I was serious? I'm fucking SERIOUS, you stay the hell-"

"Alright ladies and gentlemen," came a voice over the loudspeaker, and the kid glared at him for one more second, then turned back. "I think it's time we started, even if we're missing some folks. A lot of folks it looks like. Who knows, maybe the zombies got them?"

There was scattered laughter at that, but Alan just stared down at the man, his eyes wide. When his gaze fell to his hands, they were trembling.

It wasn't real. It _couldn't_ be real. That was horror movie shit, not real life.

Denis had been off his head with the same drug those other guys were talking about - the folks on TV. That's all it was, a really bad drug. Hadn't there been something about it a few years ago? Some crazy guy, stripped naked, eating the face of some poor homeless schmuck? Had to be some bad crack, that's all.

 _That turned your insides black?  
Let you move when your neck was broke?_  
 _Made you sit up when you'd been gutted?_

"Now the formula I've got up on the board today is a little more complex..."

The lecturer kept speaking, but Alan stopped listening, grabbing at his head as the images started to hit him again.

The face that wasn't a face anymore, turning his way.

Shaking his head, he tried to focus on the calm voice of the teacher.

"...I don't suppose someone would be kind enough to wake that guy for me, would they? He was here when I got here, I was giving him the benefit of a doubt, but come on. Honey, yes, could you? Thanks. Where was I..."

"Shane?" came a girl's voice, from somewhere near the front. "Geez, you look awful, you okay?"

Alan opened his eyes, and his attention zeroed in to the source of the voice. A thin brunette a few rows back from the front was leaning over another student, her hand resting gently on his shoulder.

As Alan watched, the guy's head rose in jerky stages towards her, and the motion stole the air from his lungs.

 _Denis moved like that, what-_

The guy lunged at her with shocking speed, and Alan's brain took a moment to catch up before the screaming started. It rose around him like a shrill wave as the girl began to thrash, her body bucking against the desk, her head grasped in ashen arms.

The guy was latched onto her face, tearing into the flesh around her mouth.

It would have looked for all the world like a kiss, if it weren't for the blood, streaming from their joined mouths.

"What the?!" the lecturer shouted, and the sound boomed through the loudspeaker as everyone started scrambling out of their seats.

"Holy SHIT!" the kid yelled in front of him, shooting up from his chair and blocking Alan's view. Blinking, torn from the scene, Alan struggled to get his body moving, to get out, as the guy to his right screamed like a little girl and knocked his laptop to the ground.

"Help her!" someone screeched, and the singer disappeared, bringing the horror back into view, freezing Alan in place. Another girl had already jumped in, struggling to pull her friend back as the man ripped a chunk of flesh free from the girl's face, and struck again, tearing into her neck. Blood shot across the desks in a thick spray as the guy wrenched something free, chewing it over the girl's jerking body, before diving deep into her throat once more.

"Oh... fuck," someone moaned, and Alan heard retching to his right, and crying from the girl in front who'd tried to free her friend, before a deep voice roared from the crowded doorway of the hall.

"EVERYBODY GET BACK!"

Alan's gaze was torn from the thing eating the woman, to the doorway.

It was the cop. Gun raised, the man stormed through the parting crowd running for the exit, and waved his arm angrily at the group who were just standing, stunned and silent, watching as the student devoured the dead girl. A couple even had their phones up, filming the scene, their faces blank, their jaws slack.

"GET THE FUCK OUT, RIGHT NOW!" he roared, grabbing a few kids by their shirts to shove them away towards the doors. "MOVE IT!"

In two broad steps, the cop walked up to the kid, who was now face deep in the girl's shoulder, raised his gun to the guy's temple, and fired.

The young man's body jerked back with the force of the shot, and slumped back against the chair, bloodied mouth gaping, grey eyes opened to the ceiling. Black fluid splattered from the exit wound on the other side of the kid's head, dribbling in a thick stream to the floor.

One of the bystanders screamed, but everyone else just stared at the man's face. The greyness of it, the _wrongness_ of it. The mouth smeared in blood, the throat choked in flesh.

It wasn't until the cop pulled the trigger a second time, shooting the dead girl through the back of the head, that the gathered group collectively freaked out - every single student rushed, as one, towards the doors, scrambling over each other in their haste.

All except Alan.

He didn't remember walking down the stairs, but he must have, because he was here now, standing near the cop as the man pulled the radio to his mouth.

"Got one, Lecture Hall D, one victim. Both down."

"It's real, isn't it," Alan asked in a flat voice, staring into the young man's face. At those eyes.

Something shivered down his spine.

The cop turned to face him, and looked him up and down, frowning. "You were the guy watching me at the dorms. What's your name?"

"Chris." The lie spilled from him easily. He'd used the name before and it came without thought. He still couldn't pull his eyes from the dead kid.

"Chris, you've got black on you." The cop's voice rose then as the man stepped back slowly, hands tightening around his gun, "You been attacked? One of these things bite you?"

Alan shook his head numbly, then frowned. Wait.. did they? Denis hadn't... but... but that other... thing...

The face that wasn't a face anymore, twisting around...

A strange metallic jangle reached him through the static starting to build in his head, and he realized the cop was still speaking.

"...need you to turn around for me right now," the man said, gun raised in one hand, a pair of cuffs in the other. "Nice and slow."

Alan's mind finally registered what was happening. Heart slamming against his ribs, he lashed out with a wild swing, a blow that sent the cop staggering back in surprise. Nerves going haywire, he twisted on his heel, feeling too damn slow, and ran for the exit, hoping that the kids peering in from the outside would stop the guy from taking a shot.

"STOP!" came the call behind him, but the outside world drowned it out as he pushed through the doors and knocked his way through the small crowd, their gasps and cries rising around him.

"Stop him!" somebody yelled, wasn't the cop though, just some fucking kid, and Alan kept running, not even sure where to go. He twisted left when the sirens came in sharp and loud, and a police car poked into the parking lot, and he headed straight for his dorm. There'd only been the one cop in the car he'd seen before, he was sure of it, and the guy had come in after him. The dorm should be clear.

He wasn't planning on sticking around anyway. Because it was real. This was all real.

 _Fucking. Zombie. Apocalypse._

With a giddy laugh, Alan crossed over the small stretch of grass between the dorm and the hall, past the empty patrol car still flashing its lights, and burst through the glass doors, knocking down a vacant looking goth who'd been shuffling towards the exit. The guy had so much hardware in his face he looked like he'd been attacked by a stapler.

When the guy swung at him with a rasping groan from the floor, Alan almost peed his pants.

Wasn't a goth.

"FUCK!" he roared, jumping clear of the clawing arm, before stumbling in a broken run down the hall to the stairwell. He took the stairs up two at a time, and opened the door to his floor cautiously, peering around the doorframe into the hall before finally stepping out and running to his room.

With the same caution, he turned the lock over and pressed his way inside. The room was dark, the thick curtain drawn tight against the window.

A body lay under the covers of his roommate's bed.

Alan stared at the form under the bedding, then quickly crossed to his side of the room, grabbing the baseball bat from the corner of his closet before returning to his roommate's side.

"Peter," he whispered.

Nothing happened.

"Peter," he growled. "Wake up!"

The figure groaned, and stirred, and Alan brought the bat up high.

Peter flopped the covers down from his face and blinked up at Alan. "What?!" he snapped, then finally seeing the bat, shot his arms up to defend himself. "WHOA! What the hell?!"

"Okay," Alan said quietly, and slowly lowered the bat to his side, letting go a heavy breath.

Peter stared up at him in shock. "Okay?!" he spluttered, his voice rising, "What the hell, man?! What's with the bat?!"

Without bothering to respond, Alan turned, throwing the bat on his own bed before rummaging through his drawers.

Peter was staring at him angrily. "Why the fuck'd you wake me? I have a night shift tonight asshole!"

Alan shook his head, his fingers plucking a flashlight and loose batteries from the crowded drawer.

"No you don't," he said with a little laugh. "You'll never do a night shift again."

There was a long drawn out silence, as Alan kept digging, pulling out a roll of twine, a few lighters and two boxes of matches. He grabbed his backpack then, stuffing everything into it, with every scrap of food he could find.

 _Too little._

When Peter spoke again, he sounded spooked.

"Hey," he said quickly, sitting up on the edge of the bed, his hand out placatingly. "If this is about the cops, I didn't tell them anything. There's no need to threaten me."

Alan stopped stuffing clothes into his pack and frowned over at his roommate.

"About the cops?" he repeated blankly.

Peter nodded. "Yeah, they don't know anything, because I didn't say anything. It's nothing to do with me."

The frown grew. "You talked to them?"

"No," Peter shook his head, then shrugged at the end of the motion, awkwardly. His eyes darted to the other side of the room. "I mean, okay, yeah, but I didn't _say_ anything." His eyes flicked back, and he held his hands up again. "Seriously, what you do is your business, not mine. Everything's cool."

Turning back to his bag, Alan finished packing, threw it over his shoulder, and grabbed his bat off the bed. Then he faced his roommate again, his hand squeezing tight around the grip.

"Everything is not cool," he said, in a quiet, even voice. "The world's coming to an end, and you talked to the cops."

Peter's eyes grew wide, as his brow furrowed. "No I.. wait, the world's... huh?"

Alan sighed. "None of that matters though. The cops sure don't matter. Nothing matters." Frowning down at Peter, he shifted suddenly, swinging the bat wide as his mouth twisted in anger.

The sound of the aluminium hitting Peter's skull was awful in the small space, a dull 'thok' and a crack, and the vibration shot through his arm like a electric shock, almost making him drop the thing.

As his roommate fell heavily to the floor, he brought the bat up and stared at it.

No dent. That was good. He'd have to get used to the weird kickback though, maybe get some gloves?

His eyes fell to Peter's still form on the floor. "You're just zombie food anyway," he muttered, and stepping over his roommate's body, he rifled through the kid's things, snatching up more food, a knife, a credit card and a couple of fifties from the guy's wallet.

Then he was done, and out the door. There was a strange muffled noise from further down the hall, followed by a dull thunk of something against a nearby door, but Alan kept going, ducking into the stairwell and down the stairs. When he poked his head out on the lower floor, the dead stapled kid was gone. As he stood there, another guy went rushing by him with a panicked look on his face and hammered on one of the doors at the other end until someone let him in.

Alan stepped out of the stairwell and headed back to the main entrance. His first priority was getting to his car, then he'd figure out a plan. When he neared the doors he stopped short. The cop was storming back across the lawn towards the car parked just outside, and behind him were more patrol cars, an ambulance, and... _shit, is that the army?_ A squat, ugly looking truck painted in broad camo patches joined the rest, and men bearing rifles and wearing full combat gear were spilling from the back.

 _Christ..._

He turned and ran, back down the hall, to the fire exit at the end, and burst out into the muted daylight diffused through a sky thick with clouds. It didn't take too long to get to the other side of the campus, but he spent a lot of time ducking around corners to the sound of sirens, and scanning the now strangely deserted grounds for those _things_.

 _Zombies._

Every time the word bubbled up in his head he started laughing. Wasn't a good laugh though, but a sound on the fringe of mania, and it came with an image.

Of a faceless head, turning.

Something buzzed in his ear, a kind of static, and the next thing he knew, he was sitting in his car. Just sitting, staring out over his dash at the Buddy Jesus bobble head he'd fixed there, and the 'Day of the Dead' skeleton hanging from his rear view mirror. There were people running in front of his parked car, students dragging suitcases to the waiting cars of their parents, parents running out to their kids, hugging them as they nodded furiously and pulled them along.

A gunshot echoed somewhere, and he jumped, looking through his back window just in time to catch a figure falling to the ground. Screams rose up around him, and more figures raced across his view as one of the soldiers he'd seen before walked up to the prone form, rifle raised, and nudged it with a foot.

Fumbling with the key, Alan twisted it in the ignition and was rewarding with a high pitched grinding noise - the car was already running.

 _What the hell am I doing?_

He took a deep, steadying breath.

Things were getting out of control. He needed to get some control _back_. Fumbling under the glove compartment, Alan pulled down on the plastic molding he'd cut a little door into, and reached inside. His fingers closed on the cool polished grip of his revolver, and he snapped it free. The weight settled reassuringly into his hand.

 _Okay. Better._

A plan. What the hell was his plan?

He had to get out of the city as soon as he could of course, things were only going to get worse, and the last thing he wanted was to be around a ton of people.

But first he needed to visit his stash. Not for the dope. There was plenty up on his uncle's farm, which is where he'd head next. It was the cash he wanted, and the spare hardware and gear he kept hidden there.

Then he'd get the fuck out of town, and work his way north to the commune. Lots of food, gear and land up there, and the rest of his cash, which might be worthless soon enough, but he wanted it close. He'd worked too hard for it after all.

Alan smiled, feeling in control. Feeling a certain smugness as he watched people scrambling around him, clearly afraid.

He wasn't afraid anymore. He had a good plan. A _great_ plan. Get up north, hunker down, and watch the world wither and die.

And when it was done dying, he'd come back out and pick up the pieces.

It'd all be _his_.

Smiling, Alan put the car in gear, spun the wheel and hit the gas hard, and his Civic squealed from the spot like a wild animal.

And he immediately slammed on the brakes, as someone ran out in front of him.

"What the FUCK-" his roar was cut short when the person looked back at him, hand out towards the car as if to catch it, their eyes wide and spooked.

 _I don't fucking believe it._

The singer.

Their eyes locked, and Alan felt a horrible, strange fear. The guy's eyes were so light in the reflected sunlight from his car, they looked almost empty.

His body jerked into motion without him, fueled by some edgy madness, and he slammed on the horn until the kid blinked and turned away, running across the road with his bag to the stairwell leading to the subway.

And Alan watched him go, trembling.

What the fuck was it about that kid?

Didn't matter. Kid didn't matter at all, and he couldn't believe he'd tried so hard to rope him into his game.

 _I'll never see him again._

As he hit the gas and tore away from the campus, weaving between thickening traffic and the very beginnings of a civilization in chaos, Alan felt something as certainly as he'd ever felt anything in his life.

That was a lie.


	3. Searching

"Are you sure this will work?" Katie asked, her thin fingers trembling as she lifted the cigarette to her lips, took a deep drag and brushed briskly under her nose. "Because I am not going out there to face those dead fuckers unless you're a hundred percent sure."

Alan smiled, reaching over to squeeze her arm. "Of course baby, I'm-"

"One hundred percent, Alan, or forget it," Katie snapped back, pulling her arm away, as she pointed a cracked yellow nail at his face. "I'm serious."

His smile slipped a little, but he nodded, moving in close to cradle her arms. "One hundred percent. We go in, grab the stash, and we're out. Ten minutes tops, and no dead inside the building, I know that for a fact."

"And you just need me to drive the car?"

"That's all."

"Can't we go on foot, Al? Cars are loud, we'd be quieter on foot."

"Baby," Alan said softly, squeezing her shoulders reassuringly, "It's clear across town, and we can't carry it all back ourselves. We do this this one time and we are set here. We'll have more bargaining power than anyone else in town. Everything we need, anything, it's _ours_."

Katie sighed, flicking a strand of her dark hair back behind her ear. "What about Davenport, Alan? You know he's watching you. He's got it in for you bad. What makes you think he's going to let us back in?"

"We're not coming back through the front gate, baby, be smart now." He grinned then, his lips pulling back from his stained teeth. "I found a way through the stadium, comes right back up through an old subway entrance, and it's not barricaded or anything."

"No dead?" she asked, her green eyes weary.

"No dead," Alan answered, shaking his head. "The plan is good, baby. And Davenport might run this place, but he doesn't run me. We'll slip right through his fingers."

The creases at the corners of her mouth cut in deeper as her lips tugged back in the slightest of smiles, and Alan knew he'd won her over. His mind started tumbling over the logistics as he drew her in for a smoke-sour kiss, and he smiled, seeing a cascade of trades to come in his minds eye.

 _Davenport can kiss my ass._

Katie was squeezing into him, her tongue darting at his lips as she tried to pull the kiss deeper, but he had no interest, and pulled away, planting a quick peck between her brows to soften the rejection.

Her sharp sigh meant little as he turned and gathered the gear for the ride - his Glock, a pump action shotgun, and a machete just in case, with some water and a scrap of food.

He frowned down at the meager supply. Stores were getting too damn low. If they didn't make this run right, he'd have to approach Dale again, and Dale would ask for collateral Alan could no more afford than he'd be able to refuse.

Shaking his head, he forced a smile and slung the duffle with their gear and spare bags heavily over his shoulder.

Didn't bear thinking. Everything was going to go exactly as planned.

As they headed out the door and down the dark, litter strewn stairwell, the smile grew a little stiff.

Because his track record with plans wasn't so hot.

Like the plan to get to his Uncle's. He winced as he hit the last step, and shoved a hand out to push open the apartment building door. The light outside was harsh, flaring off the windows of abandoned skyscrapers lining their settlement, and he cursed as he stepped out onto the pavement, and tried to push the memory back where it belonged.

 _What a disaster._

It'd started off great - he'd managed to get out of the city with the bulk of his gear ahead of the mass exodus, avoiding the killer traffic jams that choked the interstates for miles, with cars trapped end to end like fallen dominoes. Got a little hairy when he had to pass through Hartford though - the army had closed the town off completely, and were stopping and screening anyone who came near. He had so much hardware in his car they'd have detained him immediately, and probably stolen all of his shit. So he'd backed up, bumped over the median and floored it back to the last exit, taking the 202 north towards Springfield.

Fucking Springfield.

The car was running on fumes by then, and he'd had to stop, and found an easy in and out place just off the highway. The town gave him the weirdest feeling. Didn't look like anyone was all that panicked, and the gas station was business as usual. Bizarre. Stepping inside, he had the strangest moment of clarity as he stood at the counter, and the kid behind it glanced up from the news report playing on a tiny TV and tapped in the amount Alan wanted for gas.

This wasn't real anymore.

The kid, the counter and store filled with inventory that was shipped here and stocked every day, all of the crap that surrounded him, it all meant nothing. Because those dead things were out there. They were coming, and they were going to sweep over this place and strip all of that meaning away.

Alan raised the gun he'd been holding below the counter, and before the kid even truly registered it was there, Alan shot him.

The guy jerked back against the wall, smearing red against the paint as he slid to the floor.

Alan nodded.

 _There._ That was the new reality now.

Opening the cash register, Alan grabbed bills from the trays and stuffed the money into the plastic bag the kid had just packed for him. Grabbing more bags from the rack, he started stripping the whole store, until another car pulled in and the little bell behind the counter gave a weak ring. Struggling with the bags, he shoved the door open with his hip and headed back to the car.

And his heart clenched in his chest when he saw the passenger side window.

Broken.

"No no," he mumbled, dropping the bags and rushing forward to stare through the shattered glass with eyes stretched wide in disbelief.

The duffle in his passenger seat was gone.

"FUCK!" he shouted, whipping up the gun, and spinning in place, as he scanned desperately for anybody who might have taken it.

The old man who'd just climbed out of his SUV to use the pump threw his arms up with a startled cry as Alan turned his way, but Alan ignored him, shifting quickly across the pavement to get a better look behind the store, and down the cross street.

Nobody was there.

The squeal of tires let him know that the SUV had driven off at speed, but Alan didn't give a shit. Spewing obscenities, he stormed back to the car and started loading up the bags as he filled the tank, and the spare gas canister he'd pulled from the store.

When he was done he kicked the car so hard he actually felt it through his steel-toed boots, and stared down through the broken window, his gut twisting in something he wanted to be rage, but knew was fear.

Because that bag had held all of his spare guns, and almost all of his ammo. All he had left now was a baseball bat, the revolver he was holding, and a half-empty box of .38 specials in the glove compartment.

"Fuck," he growled, and stared down the street again, his eyes angry. Driving around the neighborhood would be pointless. Guy'd already gone to ground, ducked into a house, backed through some yards, whatever. Just a quick smash and grab job, one he'd been on the other side of plenty of times. Probably the best score they'd ever made.

 _Well, enjoy it asshole._  
 _You'll be dead soon enough._

As the distant wail of a siren finally reached him, Alan quickly ducked into the driver's seat, and pulled out of the station slow and easy on his way back to the highway. The police car tore around the corner in his rear-view mirror, lights flashing urgently as it sped right up to his back end. Alan dutifully pulled over, squeezing the grip of the gun under his jacket, but the cop car slung around him and kept going, busting through a red light and screeching to a stop outside of a house a half a block down.

Alan watched as the cop rushed out of the car, throwing the trunk open as he sprinted behind the vehicle and up to the house. The screen door bounced wide a few times as a woman pushed through, dragging a huge suitcase with her as she struggled with the squirming toddler in her arms. The man snatched the case, ran to dump it in the trunk, and sped into the house again as the woman secured her daughter in the back seat.

Two more trips later, with gear stuffed into the trunk so high the guy had trouble shutting the lid, the cop dived back into the car, honking furiously as the lady rushed back into the house one last time.

Then they were loaded, and sirens and lights screaming again, the car squealed away in a wide u-turn that bumped the opposite curb, shot back, drifted wide on the turn onto the highway, and took off.

The Civic's noisy idle slowly leeched through Alan's shock.

 _No way._

That cop had totally abandoned the town.

Wasn't like there weren't more police here - Springfield was a big place, and he was really just on the outside edge of it.

But the fact that one of them had just packed up and left in a desperate rush spoke volumes about the shitstorm heading their way.

Feeling the wave of chaos on his heels, feeling it on the cusp of swallowing the town, Alan hit the gas and got back on the highway, quickly dismissing the urge to hit a Walmart or something to recoup his gear.

He needed to get to his Uncle's first, make it a safe base in the midst of this shit. Then he'd do some planning and make some quick raids if he had to. And Todd's prepper friend - _what the hell was his name?_ \- had more than enough guns and ammo to hold their own against anything, maybe even a Russian invasion, which is why the guy had gone to ground in the first place.

Compared to that, zombies were going to be a cakewalk.

The thought propelled him on, and the sights he saw as he drove made him realize that he'd been wrong. This thing wasn't a wave sweeping up from a single direction. It was rippling out from every human center. There were towns that didn't seem that affected yet, dotted between others that had been completely overwhelmed.

Like the town only ten miles out from his Uncle's.

There were no living on the streets, in stores, homes or offices that he could see. There were only the dead. The terrible, bloodied things shambled towards him as he squeezed past an accident right in the middle of main street. From one crumpled car a pale arm hung awkwardly, a finger jutting forward as if to point out the way.

He'd almost made it through when one of the things stepped out onto the road in front of him, arms lifted, grey fingers stretched towards him. Lifting his gun up off the passenger seat, he started to crack the window, ready to shoot the woman down.

But it hit him then - why was he wasting what little ammunition he had left when he had a perfectly good weapon around him?

So he gunned it, and hit the dead woman at sixty miles an hour.

It was horrific. He'd never hit anyone with a car before. Pointing a ton of steel at someone and hitting the accelerator just felt horribly _wrong_. His instincts screamed at him, his nerves lighting up, to TURN, STOP, to veer away and prevent this terrible thing from happening. But the woman's dead mouth opened, dark and bloody, and she lurched forward... and suddenly he stopped caring.

Her body folded violently - dark blood spat up over the windscreen as she slammed down against the hood, her face crunching against the metal, before the rest of her flew up and tumbled over the car. In the rear view mirror he watched her land, her body crumpling into a messy pile on the asphalt, before an arm flailed from the heap, groping sloppily for purchase.

Alan laughed, watching her flop around on the ground like a broken doll. Her legs had been shattered as far as he could tell, so she couldn't stand. Instead, she started to crawl towards him. Then her face finally lifted from the ground, a mangled dripping mass of black meat and bone.

The laughter died in his throat. Another face suddenly flashed in his head, a face that wasn't, muscles exposed and raw, quivering as it opened its jaws and gurgled.

With a shaking hand, and a sudden swell of nausea, Alan shifted into reverse and hit the gas so hard the tires spun in place for a few seconds before he calmed down enough to ease off. Then he hit it again, a little more gently, and shot backwards towards her. By the time he reached the woman, he was roaring, as if the force of his voice propelled him, and she disappeared under the car as the chassis bumped and jumped around him. He ran down two more zombies before he finally stopped, his chest heaving, his palms sweaty on the wheel, and turned to face what was left of her. When he saw the remains of her pulverized head he shifted again and tore out of the town without another look back.

It took the distance from the town to his Uncle's place for his hands to stop shaking.

And when he got there, he knew something was terribly wrong.

The gate was gone.

No, not gone. It took him a minute to realize that the twisted pile of tubing off the side of the road, behind the chain link fence that encircled the property, was what was left of the gate.

Someone had driven right through it.

Alan stopped and stared down the dirt road, surrounded by a tight group of young trees fiery with fall, looking for movement on the outer edge of the commune. The trees obscured the view, but he could just make out the wall of the shed, and the side of an RV perma-parked for guests.

No movement. Didn't mean much because he couldn't see the field, or the main house, or the prepper's trailer, but it made him uneasy. The birds chittered in the trees around him, adding their nervousness to his own, as he slowly pulled forward, the revolver cradled in an iron grip in his lap.

There still wasn't any movement, even as he bumped his way over the sandbag hump that'd been merging with the road for years now, and turned the corner on the main drive to the house. It was an old two story colonial with a sagging porch roof and dark cavernous windows, desperately in need of a new paint job. Dream catchers and a wind chime swung lazily in the breeze, giving the scene a jarring tinkly music that made the absence of life all the more disturbing.

 _Where the hell is everybody?_

Alan drove to his usual parking spot, up against the side of the old tool shed, and frowned at the yawning door, hanging crooked on its hinges.

Twisting in his seat, he looked back over across the bonfire circle to the prepper's trailer.

Jim? Was that the guy's name? Something like that. Jim was almost always sitting out on his stairs with a cheap beer in one hand, a cigarette in the other, and a shotgun across his lap. Guy always had a smile on his face too, but it was glassy, like the slightest bit of pressure might crack it.

No Jim.

"Shit," Alan whispered, and swiveled back to stare at his Uncle's house. Curtains billowed, sheer and as white as a ghost, from an upstairs window.

Letting out a sharp breath, Alan opened his door, slow and easy, and brought the revolver up as he stood, swiveling again to take in the trailer, and the path to the main field.

His breath caught.

The van.

The airbrushed monstrosity was butted up against a young birch, tucked in behind a tall row of grasses at the edge of the field. He'd missed it before, driving in with the car.

What the hell was it doing there?

The driver's door was open. _Not good._ Alan quickly scanned the field beyond to see if someone had just stepped out of the car. Nothing moved but the long brown leaves of a few rows of dried corn, rustling in the breeze. The rest of the field was covered in the stubble of harvested stalks.

Moving as quickly as he could, Alan headed down the path, tracing the van's tracks through the grass as he winced with every loud footfall through crunching leaves. It looked as if they'd veered left sharply before hitting the tree - the tracks dove deeper into the earth in one spot, gouging out ugly divots lined by thick clumps of dirt.

The chime tinkled its eerie music as he neared the vehicle, revolver raised and ready. Two tigers entwined in some lame yin yang symbol, one white, one orange, snarled at him from the side of the van as he neared the driver's side door.

There was something just under it.

"Aww crap," he whispered.

A splattered puddle, coating the dried blades of grass, seeped into the thirsty earth below.

Black, just like the spray of vomit at Denis' place.

Alan pressed the heel of his hand, still gripping the gun, hard to his forehead and squeezed his eyes shut.

"Fuck!" he shouted. Twisting in place, he scanned the deserted field, the house, Jim's vacant stairs.

Finding nothing once more, his gaze drifted back to the van, and into it, flicking from a splash of black on the inside of the door to another on the dash, before settling on a clumped ball of tissues soaked red sitting on the passenger seat.

With an angry growl, Alan kicked at the door. The metal hinge squealed under the assault.

"Not HERE!"

This wasn't supposed to happen here! This was the safe place, the hideout he was supposed to hole up in, where he was going to sit back, share a cheap ass beer with Jim on the guy's stairs, and watch the world go down in flames.

 _FUCK!_

Where the hell was that asshole anyway?!

After one more solid kick, no longer caring about the noise he was making, Alan stormed back to the drive and towards Jim's trailer. The breeze picked up, and the chime on the house porch started clanging in earnest, the sharp notes hammering at Alan's nerves until they screamed. Without thought, he lifted the revolver and shot at the thing, hitting a dangling metal pipe on the second attempt. The chime clanged its last as it slammed against the house and fell to the ground.

He smirked. That helped. And it didn't matter that he'd used two precious rounds. Jim had plenty.

Feeling a strange apprehension, that he tried to shake off and couldn't, Alan took the few steps to Jim's door, and held up his hand, ready to knock on the sun bleached wood.

But he didn't, because he heard something, just inside.

A rasp.

He stared at the door, his features frozen, his mind churning over what he'd heard.

"Jim?" he said, and his heart jumped at the sound of his own wavering voice. It brought a rush of fear.

 _Too loud. They can hear you. You must be quiet and still._

It came from somewhere very small inside, and he laughed at it, because he'd been anything but silent moments earlier shooting at a wind chime. Out of nowhere, the urge to cry hit him so hard he actually had to swallow the tears in his throat, and he struggled to contain himself, confused and embarrassed.

 _The hell's wrong with me?_

"Jim?" he asked once more, but the sound was strangled.

Something rammed into the door from the other side, and it shook with the dull sound of impact. Alan jerked back, and almost fell down the stairs as the sound of clawing reached him through the wood.

"NO!" he roared, and snapped his gun up, leveling it to where he thought Jim's head would be. Two quick shots shattered a large hole in the wood, striking almost on top of each other.

He waited, his senses alight, for the sound of a body falling to the ground.

Nothing.

Then something happened at the hole that his brain had to scramble to interpret, until he realized that those were fingers, crawling through, grasping and groping at the splintered edges like the legs of a pale spider.

Small fingers, dark with blood. Nails painted in Hello Kitty pink.

"Oh fuck," he whispered. Backing away from the door, Alan staggered down the stairs, the gun in his hand wavering.

"Nnno," he moaned, and pressed his hand, still wrapped around the grip, against his mouth. The urge to vomit rose in him shockingly, and he doubled over, sending a gob of spit to the dirt.

 _Elsie.._

Alan stared at those fingers, as they started clawing frantically, breaking away small pieces of the plywood.

That wasn't right. It wasn't right at all. Elsie was just a kid, not even legal, she couldn't have...

He turned to look at Todd's house again, then back at the trailer door. Then he started running, his legs jerky and strange, and jumped up to the porch of the two story home. The door opened with the slightest touch.

He found them.

Their son, Dave.. wasn't it Dave? was lying in a small lake of blood in the corner of the kitchen. Alan took in the pulped mess of Dave's head, and a mass of red, wet flesh through the kid's torn shirt and pants before his head went fuzzy and he found himself walking upstairs, his mouth bone dry.

The other two were lying in the upstairs hallway. Millie was underneath Todd, her throat open, gnawed to the spine. Her green eyes were rolled up, as if she were looking at the neat hole in the center of her head.

She'd been shot. So had Todd, but his wound was buried in a mass of curly brown hair, matted black. His skin was grey, his hands curled in bloodied claws.

Zombie. A dead ass zombie now. And Millie wasn't going for walkies any time soon, she'd been executed.

 _By Jim?_

Had to be. Alan stared down at them both, then focused on his dead uncle. Face twisting, Alan kicked the man's corpse off of Millie. It rolled over, up against the wall and lay there awkwardly, one tattooed arm across the grey, bloodied mouth. Todd's pale eyes stared back at him, devoid of color and life.

"You stupid shit," Alan growled, kicking his uncle once more. "You fucking IDIOT!" He drove his boot at the corpse's chest over and over. "You were MY ONLY FAMILY! You WERE IT! How could you be so STUPID!?"

With a dull crunch, Todd's chest collapsed inward, sending a spray of black and bloodied flesh from his throat over the carpeted floor. The sight was too much for Alan's stomach - with a strangled noise, he doubled over as his body retched outside of his control, offering up a meager lunch of stolen jerky and soda.

When his body had nothing more to give, Alan wiped his mouth and stumbled away, his legs shaking as he took the stairs back down to the front room. He stared out into the sunlight, trying to be practical, trying to _think_ , and not having much luck.

There was food here. He should be taking it.

From a kitchen stained with the blood and brain matter of his cousin.

He wasn't going back in there, ever.

The whole house was tainted. _Can't stay here._ Shaking his head with the thought, he walked out, glancing down at the mangled wind chime he'd shot, and crossed the dirt driveway to the bonfire ring. A dull thunk sounded from Jim's door as Alan stared at the ashen remains of campfires past. The smell of it brought up memories he didn't want - simple words and easy laughter he'd shared with them all as they'd sat there, passing around one of his special joints, staring into the dancing flames. Todd always tried to make a ceremony out of it, some stupid native thing about sharing a peace pipe, but Alan always got a case of the giggles when it reached him, and managed to screw it up every single time.

He opened his mouth to speak, but the words he'd meant to say faded to nothing as the anger left him, leaving behind an emptiness in his chest that he hated. Closing his eyes, he struggled for a moment, trying to keep a sudden swell of grief at bay.

He hadn't cried at his family's funeral. Didn't cry when the cop pulled up to tell him about the crash that killed them all.

Why the hell should he start now?

Scowling, Alan glared at Jim's trailer. Elsie had stopped tearing at the hole, but she was still there, he could hear her, thumping against the plywood surface of the door.

 _Have to go in, take care of her and grab Jim's stuff.  
_ _Easy._

One good clean shot to the head, that's all it would take. Elsie wouldn't be a monster anymore, and he could take his time and get the gear he needed.

And then he'd leave. Because there was no point staying here now. The place was corrupted, just like all of the towns he'd passed. Taken from within by something he didn't understand.

With a deep breath, Alan left the circle and headed to the back of Jim's trailer.

The back door was open, just as he'd figured, and splotches of red and black spattered the dry wood of the stairs.

 _Jim's blood?_

Maybe Jim had come back here, and Elsie had followed? Was that what happened?

Why didn't Jim just shoot her too?

Alan frowned, staring at the door, trying to imagine what lay inside. Jim was awful fond of Elsie, always had been, ever since he and Todd met at the factory in town and became firm friends. Alan sometimes wondered if Jim were perhaps a little too fond, but he'd watched them close whenever he came up and never saw anything pass between the two of them that wasn't anything but friendly. Jim just treated her like his little princess, doted on her, taught her to shoot, how to hunt, and she made him smile the rare smile that wasn't made of glass.

Some small noise came from the dark inside the door, and Alan snapped out of the memories, bringing the revolver up with a quick jerk.

Footsteps sounded from inside the house, slow and scraping.

"Shit," he whispered, and a groan emerged from the darkness in response. A young female voice, but thick, as if her throat were swollen with a cold.

Elsie.

"Else," Alan said, sharp and clear, wincing again at his volume. But he pressed himself to finish. "Come on out now."

A soft questioning rasp answered, then a long keening moan, and a face emerged from the sliver of the open door, like a ghost surfacing from the darkest water.

"Oh fuck," Alan moaned, and the gun sagged in his hands as she pushed through the door, her thin arms stretched towards him.

One of her eyes was gone. Crushed into her skull. Black gore seeped from the wound, tracing scratches down the left side of her face.

The right side of her face was a jagged mess - a bullet had perforated her cheek, shattering the hinge of her jaw. It hung oddly under her skin.

"Elsie..." he whispered, his voice choked in horror, and he watched, stuck in place, as she took another step, her head tilting as she sniffed the air. Her mouth was a yawning misshapen hole, smudged black and red, and dried blood streaked down her blue t-shirt from a dark wound on her shoulder.

The sight made his head feel thick, but Alan struggled to stay present, to face the thing that used to be his cousin.

Raising the gun again, his mouth set in a hard line, Alan aimed for his cousin's head.

 _One shot, and she'll stop moving._

"I'm sorry Else," he hissed.

As his finger squeezed the trigger, he watched as Elsie took one more step, her foot floating out over the air above the lower step.

The gun exploded in his hand, and the wall of the trailer spat splinters as the bullet thunked into it, missing Elsie completely.

Because she'd fallen off the stairs.

Reality stuttered briefly, and for a moment she was just his cousin again, just a fragile young kid, sprawled on the ground at the base of the stairs, groaning as she tried to get back up. Concern made him rush to her, and he caught himself reaching out, ready to give her a hand up.

He jerked his hand back. _What the fuck am I doing?_

A pale arm swept through the air towards him, searching.. seeking, and Alan leveled the revolver at the back of her skull and pulled the trigger.

And absolutely nothing happened.

With a prickly rush of fear, he squeezed the trigger again, and the hammer fell on another empty chamber.

Click click click. He cycled through them all, almost stabbing the gun towards her as if it might help propel what clearly wasn't there.

A cold young hand brushed against his calf, and Elsie's head swiveled towards him, her black lips pulling back in a snarl. The bloody hand snatched out again, and Alan jumped away with a yell as his cousin started to crawl towards him, her dark stringy hair flicking back and forth across her face with the motion.

Alan staggered back, staring down at the gun in his hand. He'd used all six? How the fuck?

"Ghhk..." Elsie gurgled, as she pushed herself slowly up. For an incredulous moment, he stared down at her feet and wondered where her other flip flop went. Then he got angry - why was she wearing flip flops on a cold day like this?

As she stumbled towards him once more, her crushed eye framed by a soaring brow, Alan snapped back to himself. He couldn't think. Couldn't get his feet to move. His mind wanted to slip away somewhere dark, where he wouldn't have to see the face of his cousin ruined before him. The last time he'd seen Elsie, she'd been laughing with them around the fire, pointing at her brother as he'd tipped his chair back so far it'd fallen over, taking him with it.

Alan grinned with the memory, and a cold hand brushed his face.

With a wild yell, Alan swung out with the gun, catching his cousin on the side of her head, snapping it awkwardly to the right. Then he slammed the metal down again, driving her to her knees, and again, and something broke this time as black fluid sprayed over his arm and face.

Eyes bulging, his mouth open in an endless roar, Alan hit her over and over, as the world glitched around him, fragmenting beyond his ability to reason.

* * *

 _If you've made it this far, you're one step closer to the chapter staring Julie and her sidekick, R! Wait... that's not right. Thanks for reading. Let me know what you think!_


	4. Taking

The low rumble of an engine stirred him from somewhere deep in memory, and Alan blinked, bringing himself back to the present.

A hard sigh to his right made him look over.

Katie was glowering at the road ahead, hunched close to the steering wheel. Her eyes darted back and forth from every side street and alleyway they passed as they moved slowly forward. At his gaze, she turned to look at him, her eyes sharp, her mouth in an ugly line.

"Think you could stay here for a minute," she snapped, her head bouncing sarcastically, "tell me where the fuck we're going?"

Alan glared back at her, until her eyes grew small and she glanced away, returning to scanning the road.

"Next right," he answered, pointing the way, then hooking back, "Then a left on Oxford. Gonna get tight about a block down, but don't panic, we can squeeze through."

"Great," Katie mumbled, "That's great."

It was Alan's turn to sigh. "We'll be fine."

"Nothing is ever fine, Alan. Nothing." Her fingers tapped against the steering wheel as she slowly took the right, and her eyes darted past him and grew wide. "See? They're right there. Waiting."

Raising an eyebrow, Alan turned to look down the street they were leaving behind. A small group of dead, maybe six, no more than ten, all different shapes and sizes, were staring as they passed and just starting the slow shuffle they were so fond of.

Was it his imagination, or were they getting slower? Seemed the less food there was around, the less mobile they got. He'd even heard somebody say they'd seen a corpse die. It just circled listlessly, slower and slower, then fell over and grew still. When they went out again a week later, the thing hadn't moved. A week after that and the thing was starting to merge with the pavement.

Seems the wall had made a big difference, now they'd upgraded it to something more than dumpsters, abandoned cars and cubicle walls. The new guy who'd arrived a few months ago, some hard ass they all called 'The Colonel', was starting to make some big changes with Davenport's blessing, and setting up a dedicated wall crew had been one of his biggest moves so far.

It was paying off. The new steel wall, twice as thick, twice as high, meant fewer breaches by the dead, both walkers and skeletons alike, and fewer raids by outside groups. And while that was all good, the pass system they were trying to push with new checkpoints at every gate was generating some serious hate for the new guy.

Because you had to have a _reason_ for going out now. Not only that, you had to show you'd gone through the necessary training to be able to handle yourself out there, because they couldn't afford to lose any more warm bodies.

Alan smirked to himself, as Katie took the left, cursing over her shoulder as more dead emerged from an alleyway they'd just passed.

Training. Like being in a fucking _school_.

In fact, that was the guy's second big move - starting a school, not too far from the food tents in the center of town. Place used to be a bookstore apparently, and now they were using those books to teach. Every kid under the age of sixteen who wasn't working on a wall team or the community garden was expected to be in school five days a week.

He laughed out loud. "Those poor shits."

"Alan!" Katie yelled, slamming her hand on the steering wheel. "I need you HERE! Stop fading out on me!"

His lips twisted. "I'm not fading out Katie, for fuck's sake."

"Yes you are! I can tell when you do that. You need to be front and center here okay? I'm almost at the choke point."

He sighed, and stared out over the dash at the abandoned cars littering the road. He'd been here before, he knew they could get through. It just didn't look like it from where they were.

"Stay right," he said calmly, "go up on the sidewalk, then through the gap after the red car with the dead guy in it."

A corpse stood up just outside the window as they bumped up on the sidewalk, and Alan jerked back, bringing the shotgun up from his lap. It didn't move though, save for its head, slowly swiveling to track their passing, and he let the gun fall again.

"Don't you dare shoot that window out," Katie growled.

"Like I'd do something that stupid."

"You have done something that stupid," she snorted. "You forget the Jeep?"

"Shut up."

He frowned again, his mind turning inward once more. Fading out, Katie called it. It'd never happened to him before that fucked up day when he'd gone down that damn lane. Ever since that day he'd had these weird fits. Something just kept glitching in his head. He'd black out, and when he come back up, he'd be somewhere else, doing something else. Like sitting next to a building snorting coke. Like walking up the stairs in his Uncle's house. Like driving away from the commune.

Empty handed.

He had no idea what happened after he started slamming the gun into his cousin's head. He remembered screaming, he remembered hitting her a few times more, and then...

He was driving away, his hands were black, and the gun was slathered with the stuff in the passenger seat, and never worked quite right again.

And he couldn't go back. The thought made him shake, made him feel weak. That made him angry, but ever since then, he had a habit of getting so deeply lost in his memories, he'd lose track of what was going on around him.

Like right now.

Shaking his head, Alan snapped back up, and pulled at the steering wheel, "I said the car with the dead guy in it Katie, not this one!"

God, that would have been bad. It was a maze, this gnarled bit of traffic. Passable, but you had to know what you were doing. Go too far in one promising direction and you'd deadend where you couldn't turn around.

Then the dead would come, and it'd be a true dead end.

They were already here of course, he could see them approaching from all sides as Katie squeezed through the gap between the cars with inches to spare.

"Jesus Al, we're surrounded," she cried, and her voice wavered in fear.

God, he hated that sound.

He could feel her getting ready to peel off, hit the gas hard, but she couldn't do that just yet. Reaching out, he put his hand on her shoulder and squeezed.

"Easy baby, easy. We're almost there. Go slow around that guy, brief bump up on the curb, then we're through. Two more blocks and right on 4th, okay?"

The dead stared with their empty eyes, and shuffled closer as Katie nodded and scraped loudly past a blue BMW. The sound seemed to perk the corpses up a little and they moved faster, one climbing over a nearby taxi towards them.

"Alan," Katie whined, but she stayed steady, easing through another gap before bumping up on the curb. Finally the way was clear, and she bounced back onto the road, quickly picking up speed.

They both released heavy breaths as the mob of dead fell back behind them, and Alan stared at her profile with the slightest of smiles.

Katie had real value. She was a bit nervy, more than a little paranoid, but that was the new norm, and she handled it better than most. Her breasts were too small, but she had a nimble tongue and did wild things to him with it that drove him mindless. And her teeth were beautiful. White and straight. His had gone to shit, but she knew he liked hers and spent time on them. He appreciated her for that.

He didn't love her. He knew she did, but he couldn't. He didn't work that way anymore. Nobody he knew did, not in this world. Things never stayed with you long, so getting attached was stupid. He was thankful he'd learned that before everything had gone so fucking wrong. The crash had taught him that. It'd taken his family, everything he'd thought he'd loved, away.

And given him money back.

Pity it didn't work that way anymore. Course, few cared about the paper shit these days. It was all about what you could trade. Food and hardware topped the list, with medical supplies a very close second. Water wasn't as rare as you'd think it'd be, but shoes that fit were stupidly hard to find. Nobody drove anymore, least not in the camp, and while they'd liberated the stock of a few shoe stores within the confines of the settlement, it was funny how quick they wore through when you were running for your life, or walking between every place when you felt you were safe.

Right now, he and Katie were after something lucrative. Something that'd only grown more valuable now that the new guy was taking the reins.

Because the bastard's third big change had thrown the settlement into an outright panic.

The Colonel had banned alcohol.

Wasn't like there was anything to fall back on. People didn't really do drugs anymore. Most serious addicts died within the first weeks of the apocalypse, too scrambled to know what was going on, too stoned to care. Survival became the big game then, and the ones that evaded corpses and pushed through withdrawal suddenly found themselves stronger than they'd ever been, found a new purpose that drew them away from the need. Wasn't until things got a little more stable that weaker folks started to turn to the old vices, but even then the hard stuff was hard to find, and harder to make, so most stopped trying. And while weed was easy to grow, nobody smoked it anymore. There was something wrong with it. Something bad that'd leeched in through the roots, just like something bad had leeched into the dead. No highs, no mellow chill. Smoking it, eating it, made you as paranoid and anxious and sick as fuck, and he'd dropped the stuff after his first hit, it was that bad.

Alcohol was the only escape left, and stupidly easy to make. People did dumb things on it, sure, but it took the edge off the despair and hopelessness that seemed to saturate every camp of survivors he'd been in. The real idiots weeded themselves out quick enough. Course, sometimes they took a few innocents with them, like the dumbass who drank himself stupid and drove one of the few working cars through the old makeshift wall, letting in a thick group of dead who promptly ate him, two of his buddies, and tore apart a family sleeping in a tent nearby.

But that was the age. The apocalypse. Death was a constant. Those who could look it in the eye did well, and outside of the weird blackouts, Alan had no problem seeing it, and no issues dealing in it. Before he'd made his way with Katie and a thinning group of survivors to the city, he'd done just fine taking what he needed and wanted, from anyone unfortunate enough to catch his eye. He'd got his hands on some hardware not soon after the disaster at the commune, from a small state police depot just off the interstate a few miles north. Place was riddled with slow moving cop corpses, shuffling over non-moving cop corpses, and one guy stuck in a detention cell who screamed for help as soon as he knew a live body was wandering the building. They struck a tentative friendship and started running around the next town after they'd liberated a patrol car, looting everything they could get their hands on.

His friend died a week later, shot in the chest with a .357 brandished by a woman holed up in a grocery store. Took a little maneuvering, but Alan finally managed to get around her, and took the gun from her limp hand as she lay sprawled in the dry goods aisle. Then he cleaned out everything he could, taking a moment to glance down at his friend's body before packing everything in the car.

Wasn't a bad trade off. It was a sweet gun.

He tried holing up in a house with a big TV, a big fence and big floodlights at every entrance. It took three days for him to feel like he was losing his mind. That was back when the power was still on, and a couple of automated TV channels. For some ridiculous reason he got sucked into a M.A.S.H. marathon, and it wasn't until the power died on the evening of the second day that he finally pulled himself free, and spent all night with his gun pointed at the front door as something thumped on it in an endless quest to enter.

From there he stayed mobile, moving from town to town, taking what he wanted and evading the dead during the day, and driving somewhere remote at night, where the dead hadn't yet figured out they could roam. He saw a lot of sunsets and sunrises, a lot of stars, and felt a crispness to the quiet he could never quite get used to.

Bad luck on a supply run put him in the path of a large gang of bikers who'd gone completely feral, decorating their bikes with pieces of corpses that still twitched and jerked. They stripped him of every bit of hardware and ammo he had, stole all of his food, and gave him a running start through a field of dried corn before one of them came after him on a bike with a baseball bat. They made a sport of him, and finally left him bruised and bloody on the field, ripe for harvest by the wandering dead.

He heard the dead, as he lay there, blinking through bloodied tears at the blue sky just visible above the dried stalks. Heard their usual noises, the groans and rasps, swelling with interest and need. With a pathetic cry of pain he couldn't choke back, he rolled over and crawled, slowly and torturously, down the row of corn, expecting at any moment to see a pair of grey legs shuffling into his path.

None did, until the very end, when he'd pulled himself from the corn and onto a small stretch of dying grass on the side of the road. Something rumbled from far away, something his battered mind interpreted as the motorcycle gang returning, and he'd twisted around, ready to return to the shelter of the corn, when the shambling corpse of an old woman emerged from the crop before him.

She fell on him before he'd truly accepted that she was there, and cold fingers drew across his face as she pulled him up and latched onto his shoulder. He fought her of course, punching and clawing at her thin wrinkled skin until it came away in his hand, and staring at the remains, he finally gave up, his body too hurt to do anything more.

When the gunshot rang out, he thought he was dreaming, then the ground thudded into his skull and he went out like a snuffed flame.

Wasn't until he woke up, his body a thick mass of bone deep hurt and sharp brittle pain, and looked up with his one unswollen eye at a blonde man in glasses peering worriedly down at him, that he found out he hadn't been dreaming.

And that the old lady had lost all of her teeth.

The man's name was Tim, and watching in the shadow of the doorway beyond him stood a dark haired girl named Katie, whose gaze was hard and judging. Alan knew with a look that she'd tagged him right, but he kept his mouth shut and nodded when he needed to nod, shook his head when Tim's questions called for it, and let himself fall back into the dark when he'd had his fill of words.

Over the next week he slowly came back to life, learning more about his rescuers as he shuffled around the house they'd barricaded themselves into. He had no idea where he was, and the name of the place was unfamiliar when Tim shared it with an uncertain smile. Apparently they'd moved there only six months before, newlyweds starting a life together with two unremarkable jobs in an unremarkable town. When the world went remarkable around them, they dug in and played it smart, and survived. Not happily, though. He could tell they were both at the edge of hopelessness - especially Katie, whose frown seemed carved into the otherwise smooth olive skin of her brow.

One night, over a meal shared quietly around a hooded lamp, he cracked a dumb joke and made her laugh. And it was as if the sun had burst through the dark heart of a thunderstorm. Her smile was so vivid, so bright.

Wasn't long before she was laughing and smiling more than frowning, he found all the right buttons to push, and his mind spent more and more time with her, filling in the hidden landscapes of her skin that she only showed to her new husband. Tim noticed their growing friendliness of course and couldn't help but show his irritation, and the storm clouds gathered over Katie once more.

Alan decided to do something about that.

Once he'd regained his mobility, and wasn't using the hiking stick for support anymore, he offered to come along on a few supply runs with Tim, to rightly pay his way, as he told the man. The guy was reluctant, which was smart, but eventually realized they'd be able to bring back more stuff, and another set of eyes on his back would be a great thing to have on a raid.

Or would have been, if those eyes hadn't been so focused on his wife.

Alan played his part for a few runs, being the best pack mule and backup he could be, until Tim was smiling as much as Katie had, and they shared a cold beer out in the fenced in back yard as they cooked up a steak on the far side of edible.

And Tim grinned at him, tapped his bottle against Alan's and said,

"You're a good man, Al. Thanks for making my girl smile."

And Alan just lifted the bottle to his lips, and smirked.

Because he wasn't at all.

Tim found that out on the next raid, when Alan dazed him with a blow to the back of the head, locked him in a dark storeroom with a hungry corpse, and waited until the screaming dwindled to a wet gurgle. Job done, Alan walked in and finished them both off, then drove home to Katie.

Of course she was upset. Of course she was devastated. He'd expected it, and he held her tight as she kicked and thrashed and screamed. It took every ounce of willpower he had not to explore her unknown skin then and there, to slide down and feel his way to the deepest part of her. But he held back, and held her until she fell to sleep, her face wet with tears, as he whispered in her ear that her husband had been a true hero, that he'd want them to keep going, together.

He took her the next morning, when her green eyes opened and she stared into him, quiet and lost. The sun lit the room in gold as he kissed her perfect mouth, then claimed her hungrily, and she met his hunger with her own rage. After it was done, she cried for a long time, and he left her, not knowing what to do.

She didn't move from the room for three days. He kept her fed, brought her anything she asked for, and came to her at night, an explorer still, stiff with desire. She never once refused him, and he never once forced himself on her. He never would.

But it was a very long time before she smiled again, though he asked her to, over and over.

Katie guessed what he'd done. She told him, one night, when he held her close. Possessively. His mind was fading to sleep as she lifted her chin, and her soft lips brushed the lobe of his ear.

"You killed him," she whispered, her breath rushing warm against his skin.

And he just looked at her, until her eyes grew small, and she turned away.

The next morning he packed the car with everything he could find in the house that was useful, including Katie, though she kicked and punched at him until she wore herself out, and he drove out of their two-car garage, and straight out of town.

Because he didn't want to hear about Tim anymore, and a fresh start was always a good idea.

Even in the middle of a zombie apocalypse.

They were nomads for almost a year, staying clear of the big cities, sticking to the smaller towns, and avoiding other survivor camps for as long as they could, unless they needed something. Katie adapted to his lifestyle quickly, proving as sharp a shooter as himself, and just as ready to point the gun at a living breathing soul if they had something she wanted. Killing was never easy for her though, but he was fine with that, being happy to handle that all on his own.

He grew to admire her, grew to want her even more, and she reveled in that, the smiles returning, though they carved jagged lines into her skin now. She came to him as much as he came to her, hungry for touch, for control, and an anchor in the chaos of the world that surrounded them. The sex grew wild and almost brutal, leaving him nursing bruises and scratches the morning after that he didn't remember receiving the night before. But it was good. It was real.

More real than the unreal world of zombies closing in around them.

The dead were winning. He knew that, though he couldn't see what was happening to the rest of world. Nobody broadcast on TV anymore, and the few radio stations were filled with frantic cries for help. But he could just _feel_ it, just like Katie did.

Everything was going dark.

The number of zombies grew, and the number of living dwindled to increasingly isolated pockets of stubborn individuals, bound together by uneasy need. The camps threw up hasty fortifications at first, then grew smarter, harder for the dead and the living to infiltrate.

It became harder for Alan and Katie to get what they needed. Fewer people were traveling, fewer people were leaving the camps. They were starting to grow their own food, raise animals. Going medieval as gas stations and bowling alleys and movie theaters fell to ruin around them.

Eventually they decided to join a camp, the pickings were so lean. And everything was great, until someone recognized them, a young kid who turned out to be the son of a man they'd killed. The man wouldn't hand over his gun when they'd stopped him on the road, or the food he had piled in the back of the pickup, and fired off some shots when they'd insisted. One clipped Katie in the arm, and Alan had lost it, punching holes with a newly acquired .44 in the side of the truck, through the engine, and through the guy's head.

They had no idea the kid was hiding under his dad's jacket in the cab.

The only reason they escaped a lynching was because Katie kept a gun tucked in a place it was mighty improper to search.

After that, they realized it was time to head south and claim some new territory. Wasn't until they met up with a well armed troupe on the road, towing a wagon with actual fucking horses, that they heard about the big settlement to the east. One that was thriving in the middle of a city, with markets, housing for everyone, water and electricity. And they were broadcasting a constant welcome, over a couple of radio stations, offering shelter and safety to all.

It was hard to resist, but a challenge to reach, what with the zombie density in the city, though the best routes were given over the broadcasts as well. It gave Alan a little pause though when he heard the US army was in charge of the town. Or at least the remnant from an airport evac gone wrong almost two years prior. Apparently they'd gone from the airport into the heart of the city, put up a wall, revamped the clinic and put some solar tech to work. The fact that they were still there after almost two years said a lot about the strength of the settlement too, surrounded as it was by the dead. Spoke a lot to the military might behind the operation.

So that meant big brother with big rules, and some big punishment if you didn't pay attention.

But probably no lynching, so it was worth a try.

"Is this it?"

Alan blinked, and the world shifted from saturated memory to the sun bleached and cracked wall of a windowed facade over which sat a carved sign in elegant gold roman lettering.

THE BEAUMONT

"Alan! Is this it?!" Katie snapped to his left, and he glanced at her.

"Yeah, that's it," he said quietly, turning back to stare through a shattered window at torn drapes and tables blistered by water damage. "That's the place."

"Okay," Katie sighed, her voice dialing down again. "Where to now?"

Alan pulled his gaze from the opulent decay of the lobby and lifted his hand to point. "Take that alleyway."

Katie turned to glare at him. "What?"

"We're going down that alleyway, take the next right."

"Are you nuts?"

He scowled at her. "What? What's the fucking problem?"

"That's a one-way, deadend street!"

"Katie, you have to go that way, it opens right to the back of the bar. I'm not going through the entire hotel to get to the stock!"

"What'll we do when the dead come, Alan?" she sniped bitterly, "You remember them, right? Or are you still too stuck inside your own fucking head to think straight?"

Something hit her, square in the cheek, and for a moment he was stunned. The punch wasn't something he'd meant to do. It almost seemed to come from someone else, he was so detached from the act.

Katie hadn't made much of a sound, just a small startled noise his mind stuttered over.

He'd never hit her before.

It felt horrible.

"Katie," he whispered, and he reached out for her, for the red mark on her face where his fist had connected. "I didn't..."

She said nothing, and didn't look at him, she just dropped her trembling hand from her face and hit the accelerator, taking the corner at speed as she headed down the alley, and slammed on the brakes as they drew opposite the service entrance.

He snapped back against the seat and stared at her.

"Please," he said softly, "Katie look at me, that was a mistake, I never meant to-"

"Get out," she said flatly, still staring ahead.

"Katie, just listen-"

"Right now."

"Wait a min-"

Katie pulled the shotgun up in one smooth motion, holding it in both hands as she aimed for his head.

"Get out of the fucking car, Alan, right now."

Alan raised his hands slowly, shock, anger and fear balling into a leaden mass in his chest.

"Baby," he cooed soothingly. "That was wrong of me, I didn't-"

"Stop TALKING!" she yelled, her eyes glinting. "Get OUT OF THE CAR!"

He didn't speak for a moment, just stared at the wavering end of the barrel, then back at her. Her eyes were hard, but wet with the first rush of tears.

"Come on now, baby," He whispered, trying to sound confident and calm, when fear was winning the war in his chest. "You going to just leave me here to die?"

"You've got a gun, Alan," she spat, her voice starting to break, "Use it."

His eyes darted to her grip on the trigger. Could he wrench the gun away without forcing a shot? Could he slam the stock into her without losing his head?

 _Nope._

His finger tightened over his own gun. He'd forgotten where it was, and the pressure mapped it in his mind. Down by his side, no way to bring it up in time.

 _Not going to shoot her, Jesus!_

"Katie," he said, and he let a little of the fear out, enough to soften the words he was saying, hoping for sympathy. "Don't do this baby, I... I love y-"

An explosion shattered his words, and the window behind him blew outward, sprinkling him with ricocheting glass.

Clamping his hands over his head, he looked up at Katie, his eyes wide in shock.

Tears were streaming down Katie's face, tracing the anguished lines in her olive skin.

"You don't _love_ me!" she cried, her fingers clenching against the stock of the shotgun. "Love isn't something you're capable of, Alan!" At the first sign of his stumbling protest, she shook her head, her face twisting in pain, "Oh, you might _need_ me... you might _want_ me... but you don't love me... you never did!"

She pressed the hot ring of the barrel against his chest. "NOW GET THE FUCK OUT OF THE CAR!"

Raising his hands slowly, Alan started to shimmy backwards.

"Okay."

The door opened with a whine of stressed metal, and he backed out, slowly straightening once he'd cleared the car.

"Shut the door."

With a growing swell of anger, Alan grabbed the frame and slammed it shut. Glass fell in a spray onto the passenger seat.

Katie found his eyes, and she held them for a moment, the gun still pointed at his chest. They were lined deep with hurt.

"Goodbye Alan," she said, her voice soft and tinged with tears. "You make it back to the city, don't look for me. I'm going home."

"Home?!" he yelled in desperation after her, as she shifted into reverse and hit the accelerator, glancing back over her shoulder towards the alley entrance. "There's no home out there! It's gone! You've got nothing out there Katie!"

Anger flooded him. She was really doing it. She was really taking off and leaving him behind. _That fucking bitch!_ Snapping up the Glock, he tracked her head through the windscreen as she rose up the incline.

His finger trembled against the trigger as his heart started hammering in his chest.

But he couldn't pull it.

As she emerged into sunlight, she twisted back to him. He saw her eyes widen as she took in the gun in his hands, but she stopped the car, and sat there. Waiting.

The anger fell away, and his arm fell with it, dropping the gun to his side.

With the smallest of nods, Katie looked up at him.

And gave a small, sad smile.

"Wait," he said suddenly, and he raised the gun again, his eyes catching movement behind the car.

Katie misinterpreted it, shock crossing her face as she hit the gas to get away, pulling the steering wheel to the side to back up in a wide turn.

Straight into a mob of dead.

"No..." he whispered, and jerked into action, starting to run up the slope. "The window Katie! Look OUT!"

Something dark and skeletal detached from the stumbling group, a horrible creature he'd never seen before, like a shriveled mummy without its wrappings. Moving with unnatural speed, it thrust its upper body through the shattered window and he roared again as he saw her react to it, raising the shotgun to fire as she hit the gas again.

But two of the dead had folded over the hood and she couldn't see right. As he reached the lip of the alleyway, he had one moment where he thought she was going to clear them all, but then there was a loud blast from inside the car, a scream, high pitched with terror...

And she ran up the curb and into the side of a cafe, shattering the wide window and wooden frames, and crushing the dead still clinging onto the hood.

"Oh fuck! KATIE!"

The dead were moving towards him too, an old woman missing an arm, a teenager with too much hair and a shirt drenched in blood, a construction worker with a massive hole in his side. Bringing the gun up, he fired off three shots, then a fourth when the bullet only clipped the workers shoulder. The corpse dropped and he rushed past the bodies, his eyes fixed on the little sliver of the car he could see through the few dead surrounding it. A white haired black man was slapping against the driver's side window, gasping in need - Alan ended him, and took out the middle aged woman standing nearby whose chest had been opened, her ribs jutting out like spikes.

"Katie!" he roared again, seeing her struggling through the blood spattered window as he ran to the driver's side door.

Wrenching the door open, he climbed in to save her, and froze at the sight of her sagging body, pulled across the passenger seat, caught in the scarecrow limbs of the skeletal monster, as it tore something red and glistening from her throat and buried its face within her again. Some sound emerged, above the wet gnashing of its jaws, as its head snapped back up to face him, a shriveled, eyeless mask drenched in blood. A wild screech that filled the tiny space and tore through his mind, peeling back layers of memory, exposing every jagged nerve of his childhood fears.

With a wild scream of his own, Alan started firing, as the world drowned in a sudden swell of static.

* * *

 _Hey! You're still here (oh please, I hope you're still here!) Next chapter, we visit with R... and Julie :) Enjoying the story so far? Hating it with every fiber of your being? Ambivalent? ... wait.. ambivalent? Do you have a hippocampus or did a zombie eat it? Regardless, why not leave a review? ;)_


	5. Hunting

There was a scent on the air. Strong, laden with the tang of fear, and it tugged at the corpse as he walked past a wide bank of storefront windows where gold letters danced across the glass, offering no suggestion of meaning to his dead mind.

Others around him were pulled as he was towards the source of the scent, their heads tilting toward the sky, nostrils leaking black widening to draw it in.

 _Life._

He turned, and someone in a red hoodie and dark jeans reflected in the lettered window turned as well. For a brief moment, two sets of silver eyes met, connecting as one... before he looked away.

It wasn't important.

 _Life_ was important.

And music. That was important too. Something deep inside, in a place he had no physical reference for, twisted tightly whenever that thought bubbled up in his dulled mind. It never went away though, it could never be smothered, and it was never far.

Music.

Life.

As the scent swelled in richness, the pull grew incredibly strong. Blood had been spilled, and his body lurched to find it despite his slowly meandering thoughts.

 _ **Take**_

 _Yes._ He would take, and then the need would leave him alone, and he could go back to the plane. The one he'd climbed up to on the day when the heat rippled off the airstrip, and maggots had burst from the corpse of the bird he'd found under a big window near a door he'd never used before. He'd stood for a long while, watching them wriggle through its body as it slowly sank inwards, then finally turned away, his grey eyes stopping on the plane, and the strangely lonely stairs leading up.

There was no scent to draw him forward, not like there had been with the bird, and something inside was twisting, annoyed at him for his interest.

But he decided for himself, that this was _important_.

The ascent was slow, and when he'd reached the top, he stood facing the white wall of the plane for a full day, staring at and playing with every sparse feature and inscrutable instruction, until he found the lever. Then the night passed, as he kept playing with the cool metal, fascinated by the strange swinging motion it brought to the door. Finally the plane opened to him, and he wandered the aisles, following a small scent to trays of rotting food and endless packages of headsets and peanuts. He spent the rest of the next day going through each headset, tearing into the plastic, staring at the soft black foam pads, and eventually stretching them across his ears. With each one he sat, waiting, his grey eyes focused on nothing, his dark mouth open loosely.

Waiting for the music to start.

But it never did.

It wasn't until he stumbled past a broken storefront a few days later, drew in a scent, and followed it to the shaking man upstairs that he discovered the record player.

And the start of his record collection.

The man's tastes became his own, briefly, but he soon shed the jazz for something that whispered to him in words he didn't understand just yet, but knew were important. Songs with a four four beat, and an instrument strummed, and every time he heard it, he felt the ghost of something across his grey fingers. A feeling, that made something inside growl.

The need would hit then, and he would find himself walking again, towards the scent of life.

But the record player was waiting for him in the plane now. When the need was quiet, he would return, and he would _listen_. And the song would surround him and fill him as much as the meat he tore from the bones of the ones who breathed.

Something rumbled nearby, as the corpse in red walked out onto the road, and the scent grew stronger, pulling a groan from his quiet body.

 _Car?_

It was. Yellow, squat and banged up - one side scraped raw and dented. Something was dangling from the broken side, its limbs jerking wildly from contact with the road.

 _Boney._

He drew back at the sight, his mouth opening in a soft rasp.

 _Pushy assholes._

The thought surfaced and he played with the words for a moment, curious. _Ass... ass.. holes..._

The car screeched around the corner, smoke rising from the tires as the back end swung wildly, then righted, then swung again as the car veered towards him. Someone was screaming. Roaring. The sound reached him before he saw the man behind the wheel, eyes wide, rimmed in white, wild with rage and fear.

The engine roared, and the yellow car hurled towards him, blackened limbs dangling on one side, screaming man on the other.

No particular urgency filled him as it grew nearer, but his mind bubbled with a simple thought.

 _Move._

It seemed reasonable, and with it came the understanding that being hit by the car could make it harder to get back to the plane. To his music.

To... home.

He moved. Something the dead had never before bothered to do when faced with the promise of impact.

Twisting with a sudden jerky haste, he took two small steps.

And the car hit him anyway.

The brightly painted fender clipped him violently in the hip, sending him spinning to the ground, and tumbling across the trash strewn asphalt.

He felt no pain. He felt very little of anything, really, just a fascinating dance of pressure across his body, from rapidly switching angles. When he finally came to a stop, he stared up at a storefront awning for a few minutes, never having seen it from the underside before, then looked beyond it to the cloudy sky.

The strangest sensation seized him then. The feeling that he might fall _up_ , into that sky, and never stop.

The thought brought a feeling of such wrongness, he immediately sat up, and at the same moment an incredibly loud noise shattered the slow bubbling of his thoughts. Slowly, awkwardly, he rose to his feet, favoring a leg that worked oddly for a moment before sliding back into place, and looked over to the source of the noise.

The yellow car had crashed into the brick wall of a nearby office building. Part of the wall had crumpled over the car, denting the roof so much it was as if the car was embedded in stone.

 _Blood._

So much of it, the scent washed over him, through him, and drew him forward as he sniffed the air, hoping to bring it into himself, consume it from the breeze that wafted through his dead senses.

 _Hungry._

His dark lips curled at the deep urge within. He didn't want to be hungry. He wanted to go back to the plane, to the place he'd just brought the thing that played music to.

 _record player_

Yes, that. His fingers itched for the ritual of it, the feel of the thin card case around the record, the cool black disc. There were letters there too, but he couldn't read them. But the colors interested him, and pulling his first record out had been an interesting experience. Broken records did not play well, he found.

He wanted that.

But he was empty, and his body moved towards the car, knowing what was best for him, driven by something deeper, even as a heaviness settled in his dead chest.

There was a choked noise, from inside the car, but the corpse couldn't see who had made it, there was another corpse in the way.

Drawing up to the passenger door, a hissing surrounded him, the sound issuing from the crumpled front end of the vehicle, buried in brick. Looking down at the door again, the corpse grimaced at the dark shriveled body sticking out of the window. A dead boney. With a soft rasp, he grasped it with grey hands, and wrenched it free, throwing it aside with no more thought.

"Oh.. g-god.. oh.." The words were wet, and ended with a thick cough.

The sounds stirred the hunger, exciting it, like the blood that saturated the air.

 _Living. Food._

 _HUNGRY._

 ** _TAKE._**

 _Yes._

The music forgotten, the plane forgotten, he grasped the metal door frame and tried to wrench it free, as he'd done to get to others before. But it didn't budge. The metal had crumpled and folded into itself, locking tight.

A cry of pain, mixed with a choked sob, burst from the open window. The life scent was changing, fading.

 _Dying._

With a frustrated growl, the corpse in red leaned over, to look inside the crumpled cabin of the car. The boney's smell had smothered the scent of another death, a woman with long black hair, matted with the blood of her throat that was opened before him. Beyond her was a man, pinned by the steering wheel thrust against his chest. His head was bleeding, his legs were now a part of the car.

"No!" The man spat wetly, "NO! You.. stay back!" the words came with a heavy scent of fear, and the corpse pushed himself through, trying to reach him. His grey fingers fell short.

The woman was in the way.

There were other sounds around him now, the soft rasps and groans of the needful dead, stirred by the dwindling life scent. He ignored them, twisting his hands in the jacket the woman wore, and he pulled her awkwardly through the window.

Her once-life scent was shifting even as he did so, and he knew she would turn soon.

"N-no! Don't t-touch hegllk..." blood bloomed with the man's choking voice, and the corpse moved faster, aided by the groping hands of other dead, who took the woman's body from him and swarmed around it, before falling back as it jerked once against the asphalt.

Groaning in need, thoughts consumed by hunger, the corpse in red thrust through the twisted opening, clawing again for the living man pinned in the driver's seat. With a panicked cry, the man pulled as far back as he could, then coughed again, reaching with his one good arm for the legs he no longer had, crushed by the engine block.

"Oh.. fuck.. I.." the man's head sagged forward onto the wheel, and his dark eyes turned to the corpse.

"Why.. did you take.. her? She.. I.." The man's breathing grew softer as his eyes drifted away, and the slightest frown tugged at the corners of his mouth. "I think.. think.. I loved her.. I t-think..."

The eyes drifted back, as the corpse rasped in irritation, his grey fingers brushing the man's coat.

The man coughed, and a thick wad of blood burst from his mouth over the wheel.

"I.. I.. know you," he whispered thickly, and his head lifted as his eyes narrowed. "Holy.. f-fuck.."

"It's... _you_.."

Something in the man's voice made the corpse pause and look up at the man, as his darkened brow flickered with the smallest question.

 _Know you?_

With a rasping gurgle, the man gave a sudden laugh, and the sound froze the corpse in place. No one had ever laughed at him before.

They'd screamed, they'd cried... even begged.

But they'd never laughed.

"Y-you're.. that fucking.. _kid_.."

The words meant nothing, and the corpse renewed his efforts. If he could just grab the man's arm, he could pull him over enough to widen the crack in the man's head and take what was inside.

Grey hands started to slap on the back window, the side window, and against him as the other dead tried to get inside, but he ignored them. This was his prize.

His fingers finally latched on, and the man's dimming gaze sharpened in sudden fear. The corpse tugged, still fighting with the narrow opening, and the man gave a short cry of terror and pain.

"F-fuck! G-god..nono.. stop!"

The corpse tugged again, but the man's body stayed firmly stuck, pinned by the wheel.

"Oh.. god.. I didn't.. mean it.." the man sputtered, blood flecking the dash. "Didn't mean what I.. said.. not.. like this.." With another cough, the man's head sank to the wheel again, and the corpse tried once more to take him, frustration leaving him in an heavy moan. "Not... like.. this.."

Cold grey eyes watched the man closely, and the corpses' nostrils flared as he drew in the man's scent. Life was fading quickly. If he didn't get to the man soon, the memories he'd take would be flat, washed-out echoes of what they once were. Just the lingering chemistry of the meat.

 _Like a soda left open too long._

The thought distracted him, and he froze for just a moment, pondering its meaning, before he finally yanked the man's arm up, pulling the hand towards his open mouth, teeth dripping with the dark fluid of the dead.

Hands were hard to eat, but he was determined.

"D-don't! G-god.. I know.. you.. I know.."

The man struggled again, his eyes fading further.

"You're.." he mumbled. "Your name... I k-know your name.."

Mouth opening in question, the corpse looked back at the man. _Name?_

The dark eyes widened, as the man's body started to sag. "Y-your n-name.. it's.." His arm slackened in the corpses' grasp as his brow flickered in what once might have been frustration. "F-fuck.. it.. s-startsss.. w-with-th..."

And a letter drifted between them, with the man's last breath, as his body grew still in the crumpled space, the muscles of his face slackening against the black leather of the steering wheel.

"..R.."

The corpse who had been nameless became as still as the now dead man before him, and stared into those dark eyes. They looked through him now, pools of empty night.

Cold groping hands tugged again at his red hoodie, and this time he let the other corpses pull him free.

Because he'd been given something greater than the fading spark of life within the meat of a dead man.

Thoughts moved through his head with a strange energy as he stepped over the corpse of the woman he'd pulled from the car, briefly staring down into her wolf eyes as she slowly sat up, her head sloppily supported by the ruined muscle under her chin. He looked away and kept walking, his shuffling footsteps pointing him home.

 _My name..._

The corpse's grey eyes widened in an expression that had never before crossed the face of any dead. A yearning wonder that gave the smallest of creases to his pale brow, that pulled the corners of his mouth into something that might one day be a smile.

 _...starts with..._

"R?"

The memory flickered and vanished, leaving him sitting on the edge of a plastic covered examination bed, facing the doctor who'd worked so hard to save his life only two days before. The man was staring at him intently, blue eyes gentle and curious.

"You okay?" Dan asked.

R nodded, and gave a small smile. "Yeah... sorry... just thinking of something."

The doctor nodded back, and pointed over at the xray up on the lightboard again. "As I was saying, it doesn't look like there's any lingering damage from your rather abrupt removal of the ECMO yesterday. The femoral artery seems to have healed itself, which is no minor miracle I might add, and there's no internal bleeding as far as I can tell." Smirking, Dan shook his head, his eyes darting to R. "You'll be happy to know you continue to defy the laws of nature."

R returned the smirk as he glanced back at the xray. "Great... I think."

"As for the pelvic fracture we were just talking about," Dan continued, drawing the end of his pen down the faintest shadow in a broad blob of white, "Looks like you had a bad fall, or something hit you with a great deal of force." He frowned thoughtfully, tapping his pen against the film. "I've seen this more commonly in car crashes, or a bodily impact with a car. Perhaps that's a clue to your life before?" Dan's expression was hopeful. "It might help jog your memory?"

R's smile grew thin, though he tried to hold it in place, as the dying man's face flashed in his mind again. Pale and pleading, dark eyes searching his own, the man had insisted on knowing him, but that face... meant nothing to R. There were no clues there, nothing to glue the fragments of his broken mind together.

Just a dead man crushed behind the wheel of a car.

"How's Stephen?" R asked suddenly, his mind shifting gears with a rush of worry.

"He's fine, R," Dan said with knowing smile, before his gaze darted briefly away. "Well, he's not _fine_ , but he will be. He's got a skull fracture, and a head contusion, but he's comfortable."

"Head contusion?"

 _Oh god, that sounds bad.._

"Bruise."

"...oh."

 _Okay, little less bad._

"Of the brain."

 _Crap!_

There was a polite knock on the door, and a soft voice followed. "Can I come in now? Is he decent?"

R's heart took a sudden leap in his chest and he stared at the door, his mouth splitting in a grin.

"Yes Julie," Dan answered, smirking at R. "You can come in."

The door opened, and eyes of soft blue peered around the corner framed by waves of sunflower yellow hair, only barely restrained by a thin bandage. Her mouth was curled in a mischievous grin.

"Not like I haven't seen it in all its glory anyway," she giggled.

R went a new shade of scarlet, and ducked his head with a little groan.

Giving a bright laugh with just a hint of evil, Julie drew near, her hand closing on his own.

As she squeezed gently, the warm touch sent a sudden shuddering wave across his body, and he looked up at her, drawn, as always, into staring. She was nodding at Dan, as the doctor recapped what he'd just shared with R, but kept glancing his way, and every time she did, her smile grew wider, impossible to contain.

Until Dan got to the fracture.

The smile quickly turned to worry, and seeing it, R shook his head urgently at her, hating to see her concern. "It's okay, it's healed."

Her blue eyes turned from the shadowed film. "What happened?"

R did what he always did in answer. He shrugged. Julie's frown turned into a smirk.

"R..."

The shrug visited again, but he couldn't help himself, he wanted to downplay this.

"A guy hit me with a car."

"So you do remember!" Dan said excitedly. "This is great! Well... perhaps not great, but useful!"

"A guy hit you with a car?" Julie echoed, her eyes widening.

R gave her a small smile. "Didn't hurt. I was dead."

"Ahh.." Dan said, the excitement leeching from his voice. "So much for that."

Julie's worry was turning to anger. "Why'd he hit you with a car?!"

Lips drawn thinly, R stared into her eyes, and didn't answer. But he watched the answer dawn in the sudden raising of her brows.

"Oh," she said softly, and they sank again. "Oh."

Her eyes darted away thoughtfully, then returned, tentative. "Did you...?"

A heavy sigh passed through him at the question, but he shook his head. "He crashed after he hit me, died inside the car."

Unable to look at her anymore, R stared down at his feet as he swung them back and forth. "He said he knew me, but I didn't remember him. Don't still."

 _Too many broken pieces in my head._

If only he could snap them all into place. Put names to the faces that peered out at him from the cluttered murk of his mind. There was a man he kept seeing since Julie had pulled him from the dark... a man with familiar brown eyes. Sometimes smiling, sometimes laughing. R never saw his face fully, something was always blurred out or missing. But a memory of the same man kept playing in his head, stuttery and washed out. In it, the man's eyes were wide in anger and shock as he yelled at R, holding someone, but R couldn't make out what he was saying.

 _Dad?_

"R!" Julie cried suddenly, snapping him out of his thoughts.

"What?!" he yelped back, alarmed.

"Is he still there?!"

He frowned. "Who?"

Julie's mouth curled in a hopeful smile. "The guy who knew you! Is he still there?"

Still confused, R tilted his head at her, then finally got what she was saying. "You mean in the car?"

"Yeah!"

R smirked. It twisted bitterly as he remembered trying to tear the man free. The pain he must have caused him. "He was crushed Julie, he couldn't move."

"Jesus," she said softly. Then the smile tugged at her mouth again. "Where?"

His frown grew as his chest tightened. He didn't like where this was going. "Why?"

Julie's gaze danced from his frown, to the heavy draw of his brows, and back to his own, softening. "R," she said gently, grasping both of his hands. "He might have something on him, some clue of who he was, that might help us find out who _you_ were."

R blinked. He hadn't thought of that at all.

"Do you remember where it was?" she asked.

Eyes darting away briefly, R revisited the memories and felt the familiar route of his dead self. He looked back at her and nodded slightly. "Yeah, near the old theater, but-"

"Let's go then!" Julie almost shouted, tugging on his hands.

Dan intercepted her, grasping her shoulder gently. "Julie, you're suppose to be resting, not running around the city looking for old corpses. Also, quite frankly, your dad will kill me if I let you go."

Guilt stabbed through R as Dan spoke. The doctor was referring to the cut and concussion R had given Julie when he'd slammed her against the wall two days ago. Of course, he hadn't been himself at the time, but that didn't matter.

Julie noticed his turn, and squeezed his hand softly, reassuringly, as she turned back to Dan.

"I need fresh air, Dan, come on. And this could be really important to R... please?"

The doctor's gaze shifted back and forth between them, resolute at first, then slowly softened as Julie's smile grew.

R watched, fascinated. How did she _do_ that? Dan was practically blushing!

"Fine," Dan said on the cusp of a sigh. "Fine. But!" He held up a hand, stilling Julie's sudden excitement, "No running, no lifting, no detours, you come straight back here when you're done. Two hours at most! Yes?"

"Yes!" Julie cried, and R had a moment to enjoy the little bouncing she was doing in place before he found himself abruptly yanked off the table. "Come on!"

"No bouncing!" Dan called after them, as Julie tugged R out through the door. "And R, you look after her!"

"I will," R answered, grinning as he turned back to stop from being pulled off his feet.

When they reached the curb outside of the clinic, just past the row of triage tents, Julie stopped short.

"Okay. We can't get the car," she said quietly, her brow furrowed in thought, before she smirked up at him, "because Dad'll just lock me up as soon as he sees me."

"I believe that," R said, nodding. Because it wasn't like the guy had shot him and put a gun to his head twice now or anything.

"Soooo... the quickest way is to head up 2nd once we're through the gate, then take Washington across to 4th. You said the old theater right?"

"Yeah," R said with a sigh he hadn't meant to give. This wasn't really something he wanted to do. At all.

Julie noticed, and frowned up at him, and a distracting thought popped into his head that she looked a bit like a hippie with the thin bandage wrapped around her wavy hair.

Which would have been funny if he wasn't the reason it was there.

"Are you okay with this?" she asked gently, reaching to hold his hand. "I mean, seeing it again?"

He shrugged, because he wasn't, but she was so excited he didn't want to hold her back.

To stave off the eye rolling, he nodded quickly. "I'm not happy about it, but you're right. It might help."

Julie gave him a bright smile that made everything worth it, and together they set off for the nearest gate. Thankfully the guard on duty was a friend of hers, who explained while waving them through that things were a little looser now, as it seemed the tide had finally turned in the fight against the dead. She'd even handed over a spare sidearm, to Julie of course - R's open hand was left with nothing, and they continued, making quick progress down Washington through a mass of gnarled cars, some still holding the withered remnants of careless drivers, as they headed towards the theater.

"I haven't seen a single corpse," Julie said under her breath at one point, the handgun ready at her side, her eyes darting to every alcove and hidden corner. "It's so _weird_."

R nodded, his gaze a little less interested. A little more inward. He'd been stirring the soup of his memories again, watching what bobbed to the surface. The man - _Dad?_ \- holding a young kid - _that's..? Who is that?_ and yelling.

 _Back off!_

R blinked and abruptly stopped walking.

He hadn't heard the voice very clearly - it was flattened, strangely muted - but that's what the man - _dad.._ \- yelled.

The realization shot through his heart like a bullet. _They were right there? They were that close to me when I was dead?!_

 _Holy shit._

His heart squeezed tight.

 _Did I hurt them?_

"R? Hey, what's wrong?" Julie's voice reached him, her worry cutting through his growing dread, and he looked down at her, his mouth suddenly dry.

But his mind wouldn't let it go.

 _Jesus... did I?_

Something else flashed, reversed and skipped forward again. He was standing, barely, facing a broad expanse of night, lit by bright pools of muted yellow. The rumble of a truck growled through the scene as he turned... and saw...

 _Dad..._ Staring back at him, jaw open in shock, from the bed of the truck. Next to his dad, face wet with tears, was the same kid, and something in R's heart clicked...

 _...that's... my brother..._

The truck was driving through a mass of dead.

And the dead were starting to climb aboard.

The memory froze.

The world was shaking.

"R! Hey!"

Warm hands pressed against his cheek, his jaw, then fell to his shoulders and shook him again. Blinking the memory away, shaking his head against the intensity of the moment as dread swamped his body, R staggered back.

"Jesus, R, what's wrong?!"

 _I didn't hurt them... I didn't...  
_ _but...  
_ _oh god..._

"R, please!"

Julie's frantic voice found him in the midst of his thoughts, and yanked him back, and he surfaced to the sight of her worried face inches from his own.

"Shit," he whispered, a hole yawning in his chest where his heart should be, "Sorry, I just... shit," he whispered again, and doubled over, his hands on his knees, as he stared at the ground.

They were surrounded by dead...

"God R, are you okay?" Julie asked, pressing a warm hand against his back.

"Remembering," he mumbled, as his mind spun again, hitting the same memory, which jittered and stuttered through the scene with his dad. His father pulling his brother away, yelling, _threatening him_ and the two of them being driven into a waiting crowd of dead. It circled back further still, and R was standing, so new, so curious, so... _empty..._ reaching out for a face that stared back in shock and fear. His brother's face.

His brother _screamed_.

"Fuck," R moaned, his heart reeling with the memory. Slowly, he sank to the concrete curb and sat there, head hanging, his arms dangling over his knees. The damp chill of the concrete sank into his jeans as his mind circled incessantly.

Shuffling to his brother - _why can't I remember his name?_ \- his brother's terrible scream, his dad's anger, driving off into a swarm of dead.

The dead climbing the truck.

Gently, Julie's warm body curled up against his side, and he felt her hand trace small, slow, comforting circles across his shoulders.

"Can you tell me what you're seeing?"

He shook his head, but an answer slipped from his mouth anyway.

"My family."

"Oh my god!" she chirped in excitement, her hands squeezing him tight, "R, that's wonderful!"

Closing his eyes, he cradled his hands over his brow, and shook his head again.

"I almost ate them."

"Oh shit..." Julie squeaked. "Really?"

He nodded with a heavy sigh.

"But you didn't, right?"

R shrugged.

The hand froze against his back. "Jesus R, you can't shrug to that!"

Dropping his hands, he stared out across the mass of rusting cars, his face set in something close to anger.

"I don't know Julie. I don't know what happened to them. The last I saw, they were surrounded by the dead."

He wasn't angry at Julie for asking, he was angry at himself for not knowing. With another sigh, he steepled his hands against his face again and squeezed his eyes shut.

"I don't think they made it."

Saying it out loud made it hurt more, and his chest grew tight with a sudden swelling of grief.

"Oh R..." Julie's voice washed over him soothingly as she pressed in closer, her hand circling his waist. "You don't _know_ that."

It was true. He didn't. But that didn't seem to matter.

Nodding, shrugging, and combining the two into some awkward motion of his shoulders, R looked away, down the street through cool grey shadow and bright warm sunlight. Not really looking at anything, just looking away.

And something moved, through shadow, into the light.

A figure with a mass of dark hair, shuffling from a small side street, onto the curb, then through the maze of cars spread across the road.

R froze, and he felt Julie stiffen not a second later.

"What?" she asked.

He stood up so fast she almost fell over, and he heard the click of the Ruger as she clambered to her feet beside him.

"R, what?"

"Corpse," he said in a whisper, still tracking the shape shifting between the cars. It was a good distance away, and hadn't seen them yet.

"Where?"

There was a loud crash, and they both jumped. The gun flew up into his line of sight as he watched the corpse, pressing into the jagged hole it'd just opened in the window of one of the cars.

"What the hell is it doing?" Julie whispered. Her knuckles were white against the grip, and he looked down at her, his eyebrow cocked.

"How am I supposed to know?" he asked, bemused.

Julie smirked, but didn't take her eyes off the corpse. "You used to be one?"

Shaking his head, he looked back at the corpse, who was jerking against the window, as if it was trying to free something inside. There was a dark shape in the seat it was leaning over, but nothing the corpse was doing made sense.

Corpses didn't break things unless they were trying to get to the living. This corpse was...

R's mouth fell open as the corpse pulled back from the broken window holding a withered arm by the jagged end of a shoulder.

"Holy shit," he whispered, his mind hitching on what he was seeing.

If this corpse was still eating people, and there were more of them around...

"We're not safe here Julie," he said quickly, pressing her back, "we need to..."

The corpse froze, and the thing's head tilted towards the sky, turning slowly, _searching_. The familiarity of the motion scraped against his skin.

 _It's smelling us._

Out of nowhere, an echo of that scent visited him, intense, keyed into every part of his body, and framed by a flash of the overwhelming need it teased.

And R's mouth watered.

Sucking in a sharp breath, he jerked back from Julie, his eyes wide with shock.

 _What the hell?!_

"R?" Julie's brow furrowed as her gaze slipped from the corpse to meet his. "Are you okay?"

He didn't answer, he just stared, not wanting to breathe, fearing that if he did so he would smell that _scent_ again.

 _Why's my mouth watering?!_

 _Am I turning back?_

He looked down at his hands, the fear growing. _Is that what this is?_

"Why do you look so shocked?" Julie asked, the gun lowering in her hands, her body twisting towards him. "What's wrong?"

That was stupid though, wasn't it? Of course he wasn't turning back! He'd beaten the infection, there was no way it could claim him again!

 _Breathe, dumbass!_

With a heavy sense of dread, R drew in a small draft of the air, tilting his head as he'd done as a corpse many times before, his eyes fixed on Julie.

Her eyes widened as he did so, something flickering through them like fear, and she took the smallest step back.

From him.

"R?"

When the air he'd drawn in smelled like regular old air, that if he worked real hard he could almost pick out the smell of concrete dust, trash, and rot from, he sagged in relief, and quickly shook his head.

"Sorry," he said quietly, stretching out his hand to reassure, "I just... thought..." The words fell to nothing because he didn't really want to explain. Julie would probably just laugh at him. He couldn't blame her either.

Then he twisted around, frantically searching the sea of cars gnarled in the middle of the street.

"Oh shit," he mumbled, throwing his gaze a little wider, and pressing back against Julie, to keep himself between her and where he'd last seen the corpse.

Because the corpse was gone.

"Where'd it go?" Julie asked, pushing herself in front of him.

R smirked down at her. "Shouldn't I be protecting you?"

Julie cocked an eyebrow up at him. "Why? Because you're the guy?"

Standing mutely for a moment, R thought very hard about what he should say, feeling a certain trap in the question.

"No," he finally said, with badly faked indignation, "it's uh.. because I'm bigger?"

With a snort on the edge of laughter, Julie pressed forward, squeezing between two parked cars to enter the traffic graveyard, sweeping her Ruger around the body of every car she passed.

R followed, his mouth curling into another smile. Watching Julie as she searched, her gaze focused intently, her movements purposeful and precise, he couldn't help but remember the moment he'd first seen her in the hospital. She'd had the same look, as she slid out from cover, pumped the shotgun she'd been holding, and fired. He'd been so focused on her, everything else in the room had faded away - the woman falling to Julie's shot beside him, the wet screams of the living as they died, Marcus' satisfied groans as he feasted on someone another row over.

And Perry up on the counter, shooting him through the chest as R found himself drawn inexorably to Julie.

The smile stumbled and fell from his face.

 _Not thinking about that._

The mood soured, he followed her, and together they crossed to the other side of the street, their search ultimately fruitless.

The corpse was gone.

"Maybe we should go back," R said, his gaze still sweeping the street.

Julie shook her head. "No," she said firmly. "We're really close now R, and this is important. Come on."

Her hand closed over his, warm and comforting, and she tugged him along, her mouth breaking into a smile as he relented and followed.

By the time they reached the theater, all he wanted was _her_ , the city fading to unimportance around him, the tug of grief in his chest over the fate of his family lost to the vivid presence of the girl pulling him forward. As she slowed to a stop in front of the marble stairs leading up to the gaping door of the theater, he drew close to her, his heart racing in his chest. An old movie poster hung in a broken glass case behind her, broad flat strokes of color capturing the suave leading man in an embrace with his swooning leading lady.

Julie's eyes were soft as she gazed up at him, and she pressed in close, her body molding to his. He felt her desire as he felt his own, and it maddened him as her eyes drifted to his mouth and back, eager and wanting. The muted sounds of a dead city, of litter tumbling down the sidewalk behind him faded to nothing, as her breath, rushing from the mouth he drew into a kiss, became all he could hear.

Their lips met, and she made a soft noise that made him ache for her more as their breaths merged and their tongues darted and tasted, dancing with the urgent press of their mouths.

Then their teeth met with an accidental suddenness, almost clanging together, and they both broke off, Julie raising a hand to her mouth with a little cry.

"Owww," R moaned, stepping back as he reached for his own mouth. "Shit, sorry.."

Julie shook her head, giggled, then started laughing, her eyes crinkling with humor.

Ducking his head in embarrassment, he looked up at her, a tentative smile teasing the corners of his mouth. "That was... I..." When she kept laughing, his smile turned into a smirk, as he straightened and crossed his arms. "Oh great. Keep laughing, awesome."

She shook her head, and reached out to link her hands in his. "R... I wasn't laughing at you," she said gently, the words lost in more giggles. "That was just... funny."

The embarrassment lingered, and he couldn't quite meet her eye. "Sorry, I just... this is only the second real kiss I've had.."

Julie's eyes bulged. "Ever?"

He gave her a puzzled look. "What?" Then her meaning dawned on him. "No! I mean, since I died."

"Ooh. Oh. Right." Her eyes turned calculating, darting away, then back again. "So, you've kissed other girls then?"

The question was asked casually, but he could feel her desire to know. Trying to keep a straight face, he looked her in the eye and said, very evenly, "I don't remember."

Julie stared back. Then her eyes narrowed. "Wait, are you saying you don't remember because you honestly don't remember, or because you don't want to tell me."

Straight face cracking into a grin, he turned away.

"You DO remember!" she squealed, and hugged his arm as they walked down the sidewalk, R leading the way. "You have to tell me now - who was she?"

"Shouldn't that be, 'who were _they_ '?" he asked, the grin growing wider.

Julie laughed. "Yeah, sure," she snorted dismissively. "So, who was she?"

"Ow," he mumbled, mocking hurt. Then he gave a small shrug with a faint smile. "I don't remember her name. I don't even remember the color of her eyes." Releasing a heavy breath, he looked away down the street. In the distance he could see the building the car had crashed into. The accident was obscured by a dumpster, sprawled in the middle of the road.

"R.. I'm sorry," Julie said softly by his side, "I didn't mean to-"

"But I remember her mouth," he continued, talking over her with growing enthusiasm, trying to keep the smirk from his face. "Those amazing lips, Jesus, could she kiss-OW!"

Grinning, he ducked away from another playful swing, and cradled his arm where she'd smacked him.

"You're violent," he said with a laugh.

"My dad's a Colonel?" Julie answered, mocking a roll of her eyes, as if that explained everything. Then she smiled, and drew closer, rubbing his arm where she'd connected. "Sorry."

His smile softened. "That's okay." Lacing his fingers in hers, he looked down at their hands. "I meant what I said. I don't really remember. I have flashes, if I think about it. Like.. I remember her laughing. Must have said something funny, but I don't know what. But.. half of her face is.. missing. Just like my dad's." His gaze grew distant as a moment rushed him with the word. "I remember... water. We were.. on the water. I think. He was smiling at me, and I was proud of something."

Julie pressed in against his side, listening.

"Then my brother splashed me in the face?" With an abrupt laugh, he stopped and looked down at the ground, focused inward, trying to see more.

 _Canoeing. We were.. canoeing..._

"R..." Julie said, her voice soft with wonder, "You have a brother?"

His smile faltered as he looked up at her, his blue eyes sad. "I did. But I don't think..."

Julie lifted her hand and brushed her thumb across his lips, stilling his words. "But you don't _know_."

With the same sad smile, he shrugged.

Julie's aggravated groan devolved into a giggle, that died quickly, as they finally drew close enough to see the wreck.

R took in a deep breath, and let it out heavily, the light joy he'd felt walking with Julie falling away with the sight of the car, laden with rust, embedded in the wall.

Memory flickered in his head. Grey moments as a corpse, drawing in the scent of blood and a dying man, and groping for him desperately as he mumbled a letter.

"R?"

He returned to Julie, looking down at her. "Yeah?"

"You okay?"

"No." he said honestly. Through the shattered, black smeared, dust caked window, he could see the remains of the man's corpse. Frozen as he'd left him, head resting against the steering wheel, eyes half lidded and pale underneath. The lips had stretched taut away from the man's teeth, leaving the strangest grin.

"We'll do this quick," Julie said, snapping him away from the sight of the corpse. "You don't have to go any closer. I'm just going to see if he has any ID, okay?"

Frowning, R grabbed her hand as she started towards the car. "You're what?" he stammered, trying to pull her back. "No way! You're not going in there!"

Julie smirked back at him. "R, the only way to check is to get in the car. That's why we're here, remember?"

"Yeah, but, I could-"

"You can't fit in there," she said firmly, cutting him off. "It won't take too long, promise."

"But.."

The word did nothing to hold her back, and he stood, feeling useless, watching as Julie approached the door, and ducked her head in to get a feel for the fit. Then she pulled out again, smiled back at him, and climbed in legs first, eventually sliding her upper body through.

"You okay?" he asked, moving closer.

"Yeah," she answered, as she shifted slightly, turning to face the corpse. "Jesus, he stinks... what a mess."

"It was a bad accident," R said quietly, and the moment played in his mind again. The sound of the crash pulling his attention, the slow walk over, and trying to reach the man.

The man dying as he said that letter.

"R?"

"Yeah?"

"He was dead, right? You didn't bite him?"

Frowning, R drew closer, and leaned down to peer in. "No, I didn't." Then his eyes fell to the man's arm, the one he'd pulled at so desperately.

A large chunk of flesh was missing around the hand and forearm, and the white of exposed bone poked through the blackened flesh.

"Somebody did," Julie said quietly, staring down at it.

"Get out of the car," R said suddenly, a horrible awareness, an instinct he wouldn't be able to give a source to later, jangling against his nerves as he looked past Julie, at the face of the dead man. "Now!"

The dead eyes flicked open.

"Julie!" he yelled, reaching for her as her eyes grew wide with sudden understanding, her mouth opening in a cry as the arm lying against the seat _lifted_ , fingers bent like claws towards her face.

But he never reached her.

Because something slammed into the back of his head, knocking him down to the concrete curb.

Dazed, he rolled onto his back, his body slow and distant.

The buildings above stretched away to blue sky...

... and the dark haired corpse, wielding the shriveled arm like a club, sank towards him with a snarl.


	6. Dying

The sound of the crash reached Alan first, shattering through the static. The pain hit then, ripping the muzzy film from his mind, too much for his brain and body to process, leaving him stuttering, trembling against the metal that held him in place.

That had become a part of him.

"Oh.. g-god.. oh.." he sputtered, and the words came with blood, bubbling up from deep inside.

Eyes bulging, chest heaving against a terrible pressure, a _containment_ that he could not seem to escape, Alan stared down at where his legs should be. Blood was pulsing, seeping, wet and glistening over bent metal, and tubing, and engine parts that had no right to be there.

With a sudden rush of panic, his breathing thick and wet, Alan tried to move his legs, to find them again, see their shape in the ruin of twisted metal, and gave a wild cry as agony raced to his brain and the blood pulsed faster still.

 _Oh.. god..._

Reality hit, and with it came a sudden sob he couldn't hold back.

 _Dying. I'm..._

A flash of movement, of something red, came out of the corner of his eyes, and Alan's breath gurgled through his throat as a pale face, eyes like white hot embers under a darkened brow, pressed into the car towards him.

"No!" He cried, the blood flying from his mouth, "NO! You.. stay back!"

It hurt to talk, a new pain over the constant wave of ruinous agony shooting up from his legs, and from his chest, speared by the steering column. But the pain dimmed with the fear of this thing, the grey, empty face, twisting in need and hunger, as its fingers groped the air inches away.

Something changed in the monster then, as its eyes flicked away from him, and fell to Katie, and Alan's heart stumbled in his chest at the sight of her lifeless face, sliced with broken glass, and the red mess of her throat.

 _Katie..._

She was gone.

But... he'd join her soon.. wouldn't he?

The corpse grabbed her jacket, and with horrible disregard, wrenched her limp body through the window.

Shock made him jerk towards her, his hand falling uselessly as she was yanked free, into the waiting hands of more dead just beyond the window.

"N-no! Don't t-touch hegllk..." The words devolved into liquid, as blood spurted from his mouth once more.

It seemed to excite the corpse, and the terrible face pressed in again, further this time, though the narrow opening restrained it, and its arm swung frantically for him, the fingers curled like claws.

Alan jerked away, or tried to, but the motion livened the pain of his body, pulling a strangled cough from him as he groped desperately for his legs.

That weren't there anymore.

"Oh.. fuck.." he mumbled, fighting for breath and failing, and his body sagged against the steering wheel. "I.."

Katie. Katie had been here, and now she was gone. His eyes sought the corpse, still struggling to reach him. "Why.. did you take.. her? She.. I.."

They were supposed to be together. Always. He'd decided that the day after he'd killed Tim, when those green eyes of hers had opened and he'd fallen inside.

He'd fallen...

The strangest truth hit him then, tugging the corners of his mouth down. He'd had it, and he'd lost it. And she never even knew. Because he hadn't either. "I think.. think.. I loved her.. I t-think..."

The corpse made a sound, something between a rasp and a growl, and it pulled Alan back from a weird stillness, a settling in his body he was just starting to get used to.

And in that detachment, he stared at the corpse's face, and something clicked, something that made him open his mouth to speak, but ended in coughing as a rush of blood came up instead.

The stillness beckoned again, but Alan was too agitated to follow, because the corpse... He _knew_ who it was.

"I.. I.. know you," he whispered, his voice wet and labored. His head lifted as his eyes narrowed in disbelief. "Holy.. f-fuck.."

 _The singer._

"It's... _you_.."

And he laughed, despite the pain, despite the dying his body was busy doing, despite his drowning breaths.

Because it really was _him_.

"Y-you're.. that fucking.. _kid_.."

Unbelievable. Un-fucking-believable. The kid from his old college. The one that got under his skin, and stayed there. Wouldn't fade into the background like everybody else. The kid he'd felt spooked by, without reason. The kid he thought he'd never see again, but somehow knew he would.

And it all made sense now. He'd still be laughing if his body hadn't slid into that stillness once more, the pain pulling away from him like a blanket.

 _Doesn't hurt.. anymore..._

Contact. Grey fingers brushed his arm, and dug like talons into his skin.

And pulled.

Now _that_ hurt. The stillness shattered, Alan drew in a wet breath, chest straining against the steering wheel as he cried out in fear and the agony of his body being twisted. Torn.

"F-fuck! G-god..nono.. stop!"

The hand pulled again, the fingers digging in harder, and he was yanked an inch closer. But something tore inside, something deep, and held him in place.

That face... twisted in hunger, in need so great...

 _You'll come back to me, hungry for what I've got._

"Oh.. god.. I didn't.. mean it.." he sputtered, and blood flecked the dark plastic of the dash. "Didn't mean what I.. said.. not.. like this.." Another wet cough left him spent, and he couldn't fight anymore. He couldn't stop what was going to happen. "Not... like.. this.."

 _..my big fucking mouth..._

The corpse's grasp shifted, moving further down his arm as it pulled Alan's hand towards its black mouth.

It was going to bite him.

 _Fuck!_

"D-don't!" Alan gurgled, and something pushed him to try and reach the kid. It was stupid, but the instinct was there, and he went with it, as his heart fluttered in his chest. "G-god.. I know.. you.. I know.."

And somehow, the corpse actually seemed to _listen_.

"You're.." he started, but the words slipped away and he tried again, "your name... I k-know your name.."

It _was_ working. It _was_ reaching the kid... the kid.. his name... _what was his name again?_

Nothing hurt anymore. Nothing. His legs felt fine.

But the corpse. It needed to know. He could _feel_ that now.

"Y-your n-name.. it's.." His arm grew distant and slack in the corpses' grasp as he struggled to think. To talk. To remember. What was it?

"F-fuck.. it.. s-startsss.. w-with-th..."

Stillness settled over him, a thick blanket of peace, as that letter left him, a gift for the corpse who held his hand. His last friend before death.

And Alan smiled. Thinking he'd done a good thing. Finally. Because the corpse looked so surprised, and Alan could feel something stir inside the kid's dead body. His words had fed something, given something important to that devoured soul.

And that made him happy.

It was bizarre really. Feeling happy. When was the last time he'd felt this happy?

"Son."

The voice took his newly regained breath away, and Alan looked past the groping, clawing hands of new dead who'd taken the kids place, to a figure standing just beyond the crumpled door of the car.

A rush of feelings flooded him. Young feelings, wrapped in fear, in shame, and a strange yearning.

And suddenly he was standing there, no longer trapped in the car. Free, his legs untouched and strong beneath him.

Standing in front of..

"Dad?"

The man's grey eyes crinkled as his thin lips pulled back in a soft, brilliantly white smile.

"Yes, son."

A hand extended, the nails gleaming, the white cuff of his father's dress shirt perfectly aligned against the tanned wrist, the proper amount extending from a precisely tailored grey suit. A watch, gold, the wide face easy to read and inlaid with pearl, made a soft metallic sliding sound as the hand neared his shoulder.

Alan jerked away, his eyes wide, those young feelings drawing him back from the touch.

His father's salt and pepper brows drew inward, and Alan felt his heart sink. His dad's disapproval, there for all to see, and he bowed his head, pulling away further still.

"Son, we have to go. Now. Or it will be too late."

That voice, so warm now, but Alan couldn't help but layer it in sterner tones, as it had always been. It was always what he'd expected, why should now be any different?

"Alan, my boy, it's not like that anymore," his father whispered, and the hand drew forward again. "You must come with me, now."

Something started to hurt. His arm, burning in cold. Wincing, he stared down at it, but it was the same as it had always been.

Red shoes stepped into view beside his father's polished Italian loafers, and Alan looked up, his breathing hitching through a throat growing thick with warm fluid.

"Darling, no..." His mother's dark eyes were damp with tears, her red mouth twisting in sorrow. "It's too... late."

And that was the last thing he saw, before he snapped back into a body of fiery agony, and a cold, clawing numbness. A single shocked breath rushed from him, before the cold and the dark swallowed him whole.

He sank.

He was torn apart, his memories eaten, his personality devoured.

And when light returned again, it was with new eyes that he saw it, and a new hunger that thrust his cold limbs up and towards its source.

It stayed distant, and the new one clawed at the blood spattered plastic, the seat, the broken glass of the window over the dash. Grasping, groping, pulling, but nothing drew nearer. It tried again, and again, as the light shifted through the crumpled space, sank away forever, and returned, and repeated...

And the hunger grew.

The need grew.

There were smells on the air, scents that made it groan, and thrash, and claw, and yet nothing moved.

 ** _Free yourself_**

Renewed, obeying the deep voice within, the corpse clawed at its own legs, at the steering wheel pinning it in place, and again at everything in reach.

And failed.

And became nothing but need, absolute.

Something hissed outside. A thin one, dark and shriveled, joined by another, and long brittle fingers curled around the door and pulled, as screeches filled the air. The metal groaned, but stayed rigid, and their arms snaked through the opening, the fingers wrapping sinuously around the dead one's arm, and they pulled.

To no avail.

They left with no further sound, and the corpse inside the car slowed, its scrabbling growing weaker, shorter. Darkness tugged, bored with it, finding it useless, and the dead one sank against the steering wheel, pale eyes fixed on the opening.

Until someone stood there.

A dark blue top faced the opening, caked in blood and gore, grey arms hanging loosely on either side. Just a chest, for a while, until it shifted, and suddenly became a face.

A face framed by dark hair, and big brown eyes, and a throat matted in old dark blood.

There was a moment, as pale eyes met wolfish ones, when something tugged at the corner of the woman's blackened mouth, and danced briefly across her brow. But it passed quickly, and she withdrew.

The corpse faded, only need now. Useless and trapped.

Until something stirred the cooling embers of its awareness. Something it drew into forgotten lungs, something that stirred it into a sloppy frenzy.

And someone stood there again. In her arms, bleeding and warm, was something wonderful.

A torn shoulder was thrust into his face, and the corpse made a sound of such need that the car seemed to quiver with it.

Its hands groped the meat gratefully, and it sank its face into the warmth of the flesh, and feasted.

 _LIFE._

When it was done, when the bone had been broken, and the marrow devoured, and nothing but shards remained, it finally looked up.

And she was gone.

But she always came back. Sometimes sooner, often later, after many cycles of light and dark, and light again, had passed. He waited, a stationary mouth, frozen in need, for the sight of her shuffling body through the window, and something inside grew lighter with every moment of her presence.

One day it all changed. Something turned off inside. The dark voice no longer whispered to him to tear himself apart to escape.

And it had been a long time before she'd returned. He'd slowed again, but the darkness did not encroach on him. He merely waited, now without need, an awareness noting the slow passage of light across the blood stained cloth seat, the sparkle of sunlight against the jagged shards of glass in the window.

 _Beautiful._

It _was_ beautiful.

When she finally came, she pressed another limb into his face, and he stared at it, at the torn muscle, at the pearly ends of snapped ligaments and tendons. It was old. Didn't smell like much. And it kept swaying towards him, then back again, until finally it fell on the seat at his side.

Her face appeared again, and he noticed a new gash, and lines from fingernails down her cheek.

She frowned at him, and he watched the emotion work the grey skin of her face, fascinated.

A soft rasp issued from her ruined throat, as her hand swept towards the leg laying beside him. The laces of the solitary sneaker were knotted in big loops, matted in dark blood.

His pale eyes fell to the limb, following her grey hand, then swept up again to her face.

He liked the way she moved.

With another sound, a low groan of what might have been frustration, she grabbed the leg and pressed it into his face one more time.

So he took a small bite.

Because it seemed important to her.

And her eyes met his, as the limb lowered between them.

And she gave the faintest smile.

And walked away.

He grew quiet then, still and peaceful, staring out the crumpled window, waiting for her return. Thoughts of her, strange fleeting things that brought images he enjoyed though didn't understand, visited him, absorbing him, and the outside world lost meaning.

Until the smell of life drifted to him once more.

But it didn't mean anything. It had no pull, no power over him, though it was still good. He drew it in and savored it, and thought of the dark haired woman who brought him life.

Who was... life.

Even when the voices came and the scent grew stronger, his still body stayed soaked in languid thoughts of _her._ The dark haired woman. Even when the light was blocked briefly, and a new light drew into the cabin beside him, he merely observed, looking beyond the figure, waiting for the woman to return.

A man drew up to the window, and his features stirred something inside the dead man's mind. But then it didn't matter, because beyond the man... was the dark haired woman.

It was important to move then, to ready himself, and that's when he truly registered that someone was sitting beside him, as the man at the window cried out, words of fear and shock, before disappearing under a blow from the woman he'd been waiting for.

Someone was in his arms, as he waited for the dark haired one to reappear at the window, his mouth lifting in the faintest glimmer of a smile.

The someone was screaming, struggling and punching. Frowning, he stared down at her, stared into eyes wide with fear, as startlingly blue as the sky he'd seen on the shortest days through the shattered glass of the windscreen.

She stopped struggling, and stared back, and his gaze slid from her blue eyes to the wavy mass of hair about her face. A soft yellow, like the cool light of morning. Curious, he let go of her waist, and his withered hand rose to her shoulder to a curled lock resting there.

He played with it.

"Uh... R?" came her voice, trembling and tentative, as her eyes tracked his almost skeletal hand lifting and dropping the blonde strands. There was only silence in answer, and her head twisted sharply towards the opening. "R!?"

A soft groan surfaced from the road outside the window.

"R?!" she cried again, and he drank in the sounds of her words, the textures of the emotions embedded within them. "Are you okay?!"

"Yeah, I'm... oww. I... whoa. Hello..." It was the man from before calling back to the woman in the car with him. There was a soft rasp from the same space in reply.

 _Her_ voice. The crushed corpse groaned in response, his gaze focused on the window, expectant.

Something trembled in his chest.

There was a flurry of sound outside the window, and a living hand clamped onto the door, the man straining as if to rise, but the dark haired one bobbed up again, plucking it away.

"Dammit! Get off!" The man's voice was irritated more than anything, and his outburst was answered by a stern groan.

"Julie, are you okay?!" the man asked in a panicked voice.

"He's not hurting me," the blonde one said quietly, her gaze returning to him. He looked back, slowly aware of the warmth of her body in the small space.

Fascinated, and suddenly wanting that heat, he reached out and stroked the skin of her cheek. She watched him the whole time, and something in her eyes pulled at him.

And his heart trembled again.

The feeling brought a new sensation, something he did not like. Something sharp, that lingered, stealing his attention away from the blonde girl.

With a groan, the corpse looked down at the source.

His legs.

"Something's wrong, R," the blonde one said, and slowly, she tried to shift away. But he did not want her to leave, and reached out with a hand that wasn't quite so withered anymore.

That wasn't quite as grey.

The blonde one... Julie? The man had said.. Julie.. hadn't he? He should say it too...

"Juh..." he managed, his lips fuller than they had been, moving better now. He was proud of the sound.

The feeling stabbed through him again, the sharp wrongness of his body, and he groaned. His eyes sought hers, and he stared up at her, confused, worried.

Afraid.

As the muscle in his heart beat once, strong and sure.

Julie's eyes grew wide at the whispery attempt at her own name. She looked down at his legs, at his hands, his body filling out in front of her, and her mouth fell open in shock.

"Oh no.."

Such a terrible sound, from such a beautiful face. Even drowning in the strange sensations of his body as he was, he felt the fear in that voice, the concern.

"R!" she yelled suddenly, her head twisting towards the window, though her eyes stayed with his. "He's TURNING BACK! What do I do?!"

"Try to stop the bleeding!"

Frantically, her hands flew about his body, hovering shakily over the shattered mess of his legs, that seemed terrible now, for some reason. The black fluid.. didn't look so black anymore.

"Jesus, R, I can't! It's everywhere!"

"You have to get away from him! He won't make it!"

The girl scrambled for the window, as she clawed at his fingers over her wrist. "Let go, please! You have to!"

He didn't understand. Why was she leaving? He didn't want her to leave!

"Ssss.. ssstaaayy.." The words left his mouth with something more than air, something that dribbled up from deep inside, and he would have been embarrassed, if it wasn't for the thing suddenly flailing in his chest now. Something working so hard.. with so little.

It _hurt_.

"Oooh," he moaned, his brows soaring as he stared at the blonde girl. At Julie. Tears were falling down her cheek, and the sight made his heart pound so hard, he was sure his chest would open and the muscle would leap away.

He didn't feel good at all.

There was another voice, strong, urgent, pleading, and suddenly hands he recognized looped around Julie's chest, and she was pulled backward, through the narrow opening, out into the sunlight, her tears glinting brightly as she was pulled into a hug by the tall man.

A man.. he knew.

He remembered now.

The _singer_.

The kid had held his hand once, as he died. Maybe he would again.

Because he was dying. He knew that now.

"He's alive again, R! Oh GOD.. I couldn't stop the blood.. I couldn't _do_ anything!" Julie was sobbing through the words, and the sound tore at him.

"We're going to get help!" The singer yelled at something the once-corpse couldn't see. "Don't move! You can't go near him or you'll turn too, okay!?"

And then they were gone.

They'd left him.

Just like everybody else. His parents. His brother.

Just like...

"Ahh..uunn"

He hadn't remembered resting against the wheel, hadn't meant to close his eyes. But they opened again, no longer pale, and focused on the window.

"Kay.." he whispered.

Her eyes were still brown, still a little wild and wolfish, but her mouth.. wasn't quite so black anymore. The corners dug in deep, the promise of a smile.

"M'... heeerrrre.." she rasped, some of the sound escaping through her throat, which seeped a new fluid. Not black.

He reached for her, his torn hand bright with new blood, and coughed more across the steering wheel, as his lips pulled into a smile to meet hers.

And slowly, awkwardly, Katie came through the window towards him.

Their hands met, linking tightly, almost desperately together, and his heart labored, jerked and stuttered in his chest.

But that didn't matter anymore.

Because she was with him.

Katie squeezed in close beside him, her eyes locked on his as her head came to rest inches from his own. Slowly, as her breath hitched through a ruined throat, her hand rose to smooth the hair from his forehead, then lingered against his cheek.

Warm and soft.

And his heart burst within his chest, free now, as his face broke into a smile, and he gazed into her eyes, now as green as a deeply forgotten forest.

Their lips met with the lightest, softest touch.

And slowly...

...slipped away.


	7. Dreaming

"They're gone," the paramedic shouted to the crew busy wrenching the door free, as he pulled back from the two figures, huddled together over the steering wheel.

"Oh no.." Julie cried, her face collapsing. Twisting around, she pressed into R's chest, as the tears rushed her hard. He wrapped his arms around her with a soft sigh, holding her tight as she started to sob.

"It was.. my fault," she mumbled into his shirt, her hands twisting the material against his chest.

Lowering his head to hers, he shook it softly, and his words rushed as warm soothing whispers against her cheek. "No it wasn't, Julie. They couldn't help him, he was too messed up."

"But.. I made it worse, R.. if I hadn't.." The words barely escaped her throat, choked with tears, and she gave up speaking, pressing closer to R, needing his warmth.

He brushed his lips against her temple. "No."

And the simple word slowed her tears to sighs. Nodding, accepting, she rested her head against his chest and stared at the car, as they pulled the woman free, lowering her gently onto the plastic stretcher. Grey no longer, her skin wickedly red at her torn throat.

The man took much longer, but they stayed to see it through, even as the sun dipped lower and the city turned grey around them. When he was finally pulled free, R tried to block her view of the man's terrible wounds, but Julie wouldn't have it. She drew closer to the body as it was laid on the stretcher, and realized there was nothing left to find, in the man's few torn possessions.

She stared down at him, her eyes distant, and gave a small sigh.

"We never found out who he was," she said quietly, in a flat voice. "The whole point was to find out who he was. To help you remember. And now.."

R's footsteps drew near, and his fingers weaved gently through her own.

He drew her back from the man's corpse, and further still, away from the paramedics as they loaded the stretcher in the waiting truck, resting it alongside the woman's body.

With a small smile, R brushed a strand of hair from her face.

"I do remember, Julie. Seeing him alive again brought up a memory. I remember exactly who he was."

Julie's eyes grew wide with wonder as she gazed up at him. "You do?"

R nodded.

"Who was he?" she asked, her voice hopeful.

"He," R answered, nodding back at the corpse with a sigh, "was a complete asshole."

Julie blinked.

"WHAT?!"

"Sorry," R said with an apologetic shrug, "but he was a complete dick."

Her mouth fell open, and she stared back at him, aghast. "R!"

"It's true, Julie. He sold drugs at my college. He was an ass."

"R!" Julie squeaked, and pointed to the back of the truck. "The man is lying right there, DEAD, and you're saying terrible things about him!"

"But they're true things!"

She folded her arms tightly. "Next you're going to tell me the woman was a total bitch."

R stared thoughtfully towards the truck. "Actually, I don't think I ever knew her."

Julie snorted. "Well, that's something."

He looked back at her. "But she did smack me over the head with an arm."

Julie threw her hands up. "Unbelievable," she muttered, and started to walk away.

"Julie... wait!" R called, reaching for her.

She kept walking, storming off in her oversized boots. "I'm going home."

R snared the sleeve of her jacket, stopping her short. "Julie, we're supposed to go back to the hospital. Your dad'll go nuts if you go home."

She shook her head in irritation. "He won't go nuts, he's too busy getting ready for the mission tomorrow."

R frowned. "Mission?"

Julie nodded, her arms still tightly crossed. Still annoyed. "He's taking some squads out to look for the dead. To bring them back, get them help. Survivors too."

"Oh." R looked thoughtful for a moment, glancing at the truck before looking back at her. "Do you think he'd let me go?"

She frowned. "Why?"

"I'd like to help," he said with an awkward motion of his shoulders. "They need help. Maybe I can... help."

"So..." Julie drawled with a smirk, "you want to help, is what you're saying."

"Yeah, I'd like to," R answered seriously, his gaze flicking to the truck again. At the bodies within. "I mean, I'm the only one who knows what they're going through, right?"

"That's true." Julie said, staring intently at him before she gave a little nod. "Alright."

R stared back, confused. "Alright... what?"

"I'm going too."

His brows arched. "But, Julie... it could be dangerous."

"Yeahhh," Julie agreed, her eyes widening around a knowing smile. "That's why you need me."

R opened his mouth, then promptly shut it again.

"Sorry?" Julie asked, tilting her head with a smirk. "What was that? Going to say something about your height again?"

His mouth twisted awkwardly, but wisely, he said nothing.

The smirk grew flat with annoyance, and she flung an arm out towards the truck. "Or maybe you weren't through insulting the dead guy?"

"Julie..."

He chased after her down the darkened street, and they walked distantly at first, then slowly drew together, his gaze meeting hers apologetically, hers meeting his sternly at first, then softening into a small smile.

And their hands slowly found each other and clasped tight.

Alan watched them go.

"You were a bit of an asshole, you know," Katie said beside him, a smirk playing at her lips.

Grinning back at her, he squeezed her hand in his, and gave the smallest shrug of his shoulders. "Yeah, I know."

His eyes turned to the truck, and fell to the covered bodies within. He felt very little at the sight, save relief. It'd been a stupid, frustrating life.

But he was finally free.

He turned back to Katie, the grin softening to something more open and true. "Gonna make up for that now though."

Her eyes glittered in the pale light of the rising moon as she smiled back. "Yeah?"

Drawing in close, he kissed her softly, then slowly pulled back. "Yeah."

Katie's smile was brilliant in the moonlight as she took the night in, eyes dancing across the broad river of twinkling stars flowing above their heads. Shifting and spinning, ever turning.

She was beautiful. And he adored her.

"What happens now?" she asked, her voice filled with wonder as she looked back down at him, her eyes startlingly young.

"Anything we want," he answered, the grin returning, now impish and a little wild.

Katie laughed. "Aren't we supposed to go...?" And she pointed towards the stars.

He snorted. "Oh, we'll get there soon enough. I'm in no rush to see my parents. They can just wait." Grasping both of her hands then, he pulled her close, feeling her dawning sense of awe.

"Where have you always wanted to go," he asked softly. "Just name it."

"Paris," she whispered back, without hesitation, her smile caught on the cusp of disbelief.

He laughed. "Paris it is."

Katie frowned suddenly, her eyes ducking briefly before drawing back. "But Alan... how can we do that? Everywhere's a mess. Paris doesn't really exist anymore."

With a fond smile, he brushed his hand along her cheek, and his gaze grew wide, and bright, reflecting the stars above. Bigger than it had ever been.

"Katie, we can go anywhere, any _time_ we choose. We're just thoughts walking through a dream, one we make up ourselves. Everything is _ours_."

The frown fell from her face in an instant, leaving behind a joy that fought the moon for its light, and she laughed, her eyes brighter than they'd ever been before.

And she nodded.

"Paris it is."

And Alan kissed her once more, his heart light and happy, ready to dream a impossible dream with the woman at his side.

After all...

...he'd always been one to dream big.

 **THE END**

* * *

 _That's the story folks! Thanks for reading, if you made it this far. :) It was sad, but ended with a lot of hope, and a promise of redemption, which many of my stories seem to have. If you've enjoyed it, I hope you'll leave a review. If you didn't like it, I hope you'll leave a review. If your name starts with any letter of the English alphabet, or Chinese or Japanese kanji, I hope you'll leave a review._

 _Also, huge huge thanks to Chad, for encouragement as I wrote this, and for being my beta reader :D_

 _Thanks, as always, for reading :)_


End file.
